High stake projects are never completed with time to spare.

No matter how much time you schedule, how well you plan, or how amazing a team you assemble, some unexpected issue will inevitably sneak up and force you to throw your plans away.

Like an ever-evolving Rube Goldberg machine, every reaction is dependent on a previous action that leads to unintended and unpredictable downstream consequences.

The key to pulling complex projects off is twofold:

– First, you want to create multiple independent Rupe Goldberg machines so that it doesn’t affect the others when one section breaks.
– Second, you have to have remembered that nobody knows how many Rupe Goldberg machines were supposed to be there and what the intended result was supposed to resemble.

The expectation is simply to have a completed project. The rest is all #storytelling and marketing.

After dragging two heavy suitcases on and off two taxis and two trains over a four-hour period, I was eager to check in so I could relax and enjoy the sunset.

Preventing me from doing that – was a family that had arrived seconds before, taking forever to check-in.

Fifteen minutes went by as I paced anxiously back and forth, watching the sunset disappear behind the mountains.

How infuriating.

But the story can be told another way: I kept myself from enjoying a beautiful sunset because I wouldn’t allow myself to let go of the need to check in first.

One story is a rant; the other has a lesson.

#Storytelling