Page 111 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

Kintsugi for IT Project Managers – 5 ideas to prevent repeating mistakes

worth their weight in gold

Recently, I had dinner in a well-known Asian restaurant
chain.

On their placemats, they described the Japanese art
form of Kintsugi which seeks to, not just fix pottery, but
treat its breakage as part of the history of the object
and not as something to disguise.
What a powerful metaphor for life in general but
project management especially! Nothing is ever truly
broken.
Kintsugi is said to originate in the 15th century when
Japanese military commander Ashikaga Yoshimasa
broke one a beloved Chinese bowl. He was
disappointed with the repair job, probably used whatever the Japanese for ‘shoddy’ is, and he
compelled the craftsmen to come up with a more eye-pleasing method of repair.

So, in the art of Kintsugi, broken pottery is repaired with a seam of lacquer and precious metal,
usually, gold - Kintsugi translates, more or less, as ‘joining with gold’. Kintsugi emphasises damage
rather than hide it and probably is a great illustration of the difference between eastern and western
philosophy. A Kintsugi repair actually beautifies and accentuates the breakage, it becomes an
important part of the object’s story, so a broken pot becomes something not to be discarded, but
actually even more precious than it was before.

What power there is in finding beauty in the damaged or imperfect.

The reason I was at the restaurant that night was to console myself about a project that had not
turned out the way I thought it should. I felt a bit broken, I won’t say I was riddled with self-doubt –
but you know how it is when a project that you’ve put your heart and soul, blood, sweat and tears
into goes belly up! You dwell on what you could have done better, you question your decisions, and
overthink If you’re not careful.
This little placemat inspired me to ponder all the errors that I had made, not just on this project but
over the years of working on projects! It also gave me a different perspective: every failure has
taught me something that I now use to try and prevent similar issues happening again.
I decided that rather than beat myself up over past errors or missteps, I’d “repair myself with gold”
and make myself more precious than I was before.

5 Gold Repairs – Your Steps to Kintsugi for Project Managers
1 – Acceptance - Own and Acknowledge Your Errors

Blaming other people or not accepting your responsibility isn’t helpful in the long term, to anyone,
least of all yourself. A lot of repeated IT project fails come from this exact scenario, a failure to hold
up your hands and say, “I messed up.”