Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose tore some nasty things in his knee and is looking at rehab for six to nine months. He was the team’s best player, leading the Bulls to the playoffs each year since he started, earning Rookie of the Year, and becoming only the second Bulls player to earn the MVP. Now he’s out for 2012-13, and the Bulls have to figure out how to get to the playoffs without him. Organizations find themselves in this situation, maybe not because of torn ACLs, but the resulting chaos and confusion can be equally crippling. When you lose a crucial member, it can send your project team into a tailspin. How do you start winning again?

In the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), managing stakeholder expectations is one of the central issues explored. “The desired outcome is stakeholders who have realistic expectations of the product and project and support the project team’s approach to the project.” This is quite an ambitious goal given that stakeholders are so diverse and differ so widely in their expectations of a project. How do you manage and align them to create an optimal environment for your project’s growth and completion?

Suppose that you are having surgery; there is a risk that you’ll have trouble with anesthesia. It is possible that you could develop a clot, infection, or post-op pneumonia. Your surgeon has to prepare for these risks. But what if you should suffer a stroke during surgery (which is relatively rare)? Or your liver function is impaired (which is also uncommon)? Your doctor also has to be aware of these risks and have a plan to combat them in the operating room. Your organization needs to be an expertly trained surgeon, identifying both obvious and the less obvious risks and developing strategies to deal with them.

Businesses would not dream of operating without insurance; what if someone gets hurt? What if there is a fire? What if there is earthquake damage or a meteor falls from space and lands on your facility? What if someone embezzles or steals confidential information? We need protection against these risks – but what about a much more common risk, the loss of key players?

If you get yourself a new Canon EOS 5D Mark III, you can become a professional photographer. If you pick up an Estwing hammer, you can become a master carpenter. Does this make sense? It is like saying that Michelangelo was only a good painter because he had a great brush, or he was a good sculptor because he had a high-quality chisel. We understand this, but why is it that we expect tools to be the answer, end-all, be-all for business? The key to success is not in the tools, it’s in the people. Effective leadership and project management are what create success.

Tools are important; that’s absolutely true. You couldn’t migrate from a legacy system to an updated suite of cloud-based programs without the right tools. You couldn’t upgrade a facility without tools. But if technology could do it all, we wouldn’t have abysmal project failure rates – and IT certainly wouldn’t be the most prone to failures! Most failures are not attributable to lack of, or improper, technology and tools, or even budget constraints. They fail because of old-fashioned human error in the form of weak management.