Adam Gonnerman

There are moments in a program manager's career when following the established process is exactly the right call, and moments when following it blindly leads to serious problems. Knowing the difference is not something any methodology teaches you. It comes from experience, and sometimes from a project that goes sideways before it gets right. I was once tasked with leading an ADA compliance initiative for a company's primary application, covering web, mobile, and Smart TV platforms. Accessibility work is not optional. It is a legal and ethical obligation, and the stakes of getting it wrong extend well beyond a missed deadline. When I assumed the project it had already passed through the hands of two product managers, both of whom had moved on to other opportunities. I was inheriting something that had already lost momentum and institutional memory. I did what any program manager would do in that situation: gathered what information I could, held a structured kickoff meeting, al...

When I was young, meeting someone new was uncomplicated. You saw another kid, asked if they wanted to play, and a friendship began. Growing up in a pre-internet world, the people you knew were largely the people you saw regularly. You had each other's phone numbers, and that was enough. Connection happened through proximity. There was a time, further back in history, when formal letters of introduction served as the mechanism for entering new social and professional circles, but that practice faded long ago. Today, the introduction happens online, often before any in-person meeting ever takes place. About twenty-one years ago I made a trip to New Hampshire. I was a full-time minister at the time and was exploring the possibility of becoming a bivocational minister in that state, with the goal of finding steady work while using my remaining time to plant a Brazilian congregation. When I arrived, I already had a contact: a Brazilian man I had connected with online. He and his Americ...

A little over a month ago we heard about someone at Meta losing a good portion of her email to an AI that went off course. She managed to stop it before it finished, and it apologized, but the damage was done. I was surprised that she posted about it publicly. In any case, it demonstrates the danger presented by giving AI complete control over one's desktop and work.  This situation was presaged humorously by the series Silicon Valley. See below and enjoy!  

More than a decade ago, sitting across from a Brazilian consultant who was reviewing my resume for a potential project management opportunity, I received a verdict I was not expecting. He looked up from the page and said, matter-of-factly: "You're a theologian." He was not wrong about my degree. I hold a Bachelor of Ministry, earned through an accelerated program at Harding University that covered nearly four years of biblical, counseling, and ministry education in two. But in the standard Brazilian professional framework, you are what your degree says you are. My PMP certification, my years of project management experience, my track record of delivering complex initiatives meant very little in that moment. I had graduated into theology. Therefore I was a theologian. I thought about that conversation years later when I enrolled in a Master of Arts program in management with a concentration in project management, made possible through Viacom's employee education bene...

Nobody puts missionary experience on a project management resume. I did not either, at least not explicitly. But after fifteen years delivering complex technology programs, I am convinced that two years of mission service in Brazil shaped my professional instincts more than any methodology certification ever has. Let me explain why. After a mission internship in Brazil in 1997, I committed to returning as a full-time missionary. That meant getting the right education first. I enrolled in Harding University's School of Biblical Studies, an accelerated program that compressed nearly four years of education into two. The pace was relentless. I studied beginning through advanced biblical Greek in 24 weeks. Along the way I went deep not just into Scripture but into counseling, fundraising, cross-cultural communication, and the practical realities of sustaining a mission. I was trained to enter unfamiliar territory and figure it out. That turns out to be an extraordinarily useful profess...

“The purpose of a system is what it does.” — Stafford Beer A team drowning in slow approvals decides the problem is speed, so they add AI. Leadership announces a new assistant to unlock productivity. A chatbot is rolled out to close knowledge gaps and reduce internal friction. Demos look promising. Early outputs feel impressive. But weeks later, nothing fundamental has changed. Decisions are still unclear. Ownership is still fuzzy. Data is still inconsistent. If anything, the noise level has increased. You can't use AI to repair broken systems. What it does in reality is accelerate their weaknesses. You see, AI multiplies what already exists. Unclear decision rights leads directly to faster confusion. If no one knows who owns decisions, AI generates more options. Further, more stakeholders weigh in, and decision latency increases. Think about it like this: AI increases surface area of disagreement. Poor data result in confidently wrong outputs. If your data are incomplete, incons...

"The leader must own everything in his world. There is no one else to blame." — Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership Having just been assigned to a cloud migration team, I was trying to get the lay of the land and understand where project work stood. What I gathered wasn't good. They hadn't had a project manager for about a year, and work had started to drift badly. That first week was when their manager called me into his office. He laid into me about how far behind everything was. His frustration directed at me felt like an accusation, as if I'd personally caused the delays. I could hardly get a word in edgewise as he vented. It became very clear to me that although I had no hand in creating the mess, it was mine now anyway.  This is part of inherited debt. When you step into a team, you don't just inherit a role. You inherit the technical shortcuts nobody documented, the cultural habits that formed before you arrived, and the strained relationships with stakeh...