#8:What a Construction Manager / Project Manager can Learn from a Race Car Driver

I have spent most of my career working in the Phoenix market. While living there I met a race car driver/driving instructor named Ty. He worked at the Bondurant School of High Performance Driving and he told me a story about car racing that applies to construction management /project management too.

First let me say that Ty could really drive. Mitsubishi hired him to drive for a commercial, back in the mid 90’s, where he flies down a narrow city alleyway, in a Mitsubishi Eclipse and notices the alley dead ends. Ty slides the car into 180 degree spin. The alley was only a few feet wider than the length of the car.

Prior to the shoot, Ty told the director that they should wet down the pavement to foster a lower speed requirement. The director said that’s why I brought three cars.He thought the higher speed would make for a better commercial.  Ty totaled the first car on Take One. He completed the spin without contact, but slammed the car broadside into one of the adjacent brick buildings. The director then decided to wet down the pavement. Take Two was a success.

Poor Don, with all your big ambitions, there is still a lot that you don’t know, isn’t there?

Ty said that sometimes famous race car drivers come in for advanced driving lessons. I was skeptical about the story. I pressed him for more details. He said; yeah and sometimes they aren’t very good shifters at all. In fact, he started naming names. Now, I was thinking that Ty might be jealous – maybe this was a case of sour grapes. Only because he kept talking, I had to ask: How can anyone be at the top of their trade, and have such major flaws.  I was challenging him – calling him out.

He looked at me, like he felt sorry for me. Almost as though to say: Poor Don, with all your big ambitions, there is still a lot that you don’t know, isn’t there?

Then he said, real matter-of-fact like: They just compensate by being real good at another aspect of the sport. He went on to say that in the case of driving – most people don’t realize that advance driving is like ballet on wheels. It is all about using the breaks and gas and the steering wheel to increase and decrease friction between the road and the wheels. And if you saw the Mitsubishi commercial, you know that it’s true. All of a sudden shifting did not seem all important.

The story struck a chord with me at the time. I remember coming home excited to share my new found wisdom with my three teenage kids. They had a lot of questions. All of which were related to driving fast and crashing cars into buildings.

Why I bring this up is because I believe it is very relevant to what we are doing in construction management. More specifically that it applies directly to valid CPM scheduling and CPM schedule maintenance. Because when you install a valid CPM schedule into your project and maintain/perform that schedule; it does the same thing, it compensates for weaknesses of the PM team in other areas. It affords you the ability to have a successful project … even an extraordinary project outcome. That is the power of a valid CPM schedule.

How Would You Like To Guarantee an Extraordinary Project Outcome?

To read more about the profound capabilities of valid CPM schedule creation and maintenance see the silver bullet post.