78: Opposites

The Project
Well Project Program and Portfolio Management in easy steps is now out in print and the publishers have sent me my author’s copies but I haven’t received them yet. I was going to crack a bottle of bubbly to, celebrate but it will have to wait until they arrive. I will just have to make do with a couple of pints at the Bridge Inn instead. I need it as I’ve wasted the whole day sorting out my email accounts, which both seemed to go mad at the same time. Losing all the header information, delivering the text as raw HTML or just refusing to send or receive. It would be nice to have an IT support group rather than being it! One minute the world is rosy the next it’s all gloom, it’s all about opposites.

The Way  
The wise project manager is like water, soft and yielding, yet water can wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield (living in Topsham we witnessed it ripping apart the Goat Walk and two stretches sea defence walls).  As a general rule, whatever is soft and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.  

The wise project manager knows that yielding overcomes resistance and gentleness melts rigid defences.  He does not fight the force of the project team’s energy, but flows and yields and absorbs and let’s go.  This ability to be soft makes the wise project manager a good leader.  This is another paradox: what is soft is strong and what is hard is weak.  

Nothing in the world is as soft and weak as water.  
But to attack the hard and strong,  
Nothing can beat it.  

Weak conquers strong,  
Soft conquers hard.  
Everything in the world knows this,  
Yet none can put it into practice.  

Therefore the sage says:  
He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people,  
Might be called ruler of the village.  
He who takes upon himself the country’s misfortunes,  
Might be called ruler of the world.  
True words represent their opposites.