Understanding and navigating company culture is an important skill to develop as a project manager in order to work collaboratively with your team and with management. You may be great at putting together project plans, running efficient stand-ups, and facilitating team meetings, but if you are not able to adapt to the company culture early on and be accepted by your team, then it's difficult to gain credibility, respect, and traction to get things accomplished.  

I’ve always wondered what it would be like if companies suddenly stopped hiring project managers. Would more projects fail? Would there be more chaos and confusion? Would developers or development managers make better project managers or be able/willing to fulfill that role? Are project management roles transforming into scrum master roles or a hybrid of both project manager and scrum master? Are projects completed more quickly with project management involvement?

Having lived and breathed project management for the past 20 years at various clientele sites, I've come to believe that many of the principles of martial arts can be applied directly to project management.  In this blog, I will discuss how I was able to use these principles to successfully navigate a client environment from day one.