Taking a Lean Approach is Hard Work
May 5th, 2003 by HalSeth Godin writes A Brief History of Hard Work, Adjusted for Risk in Fast Company. Check out Seth's Blog for more of his views.
Seth contrasts the physically hard work with the emotionally hard work. He calls on us to face the fears of speaking up in organizations.
Hard work is where our job security, our financial profit, and our future joy lie.
It's hard work to make difficult emotional decisions, such as quitting a job and setting out on your own. It's hard work to invent a new system, service, or process that's remarkable. It's hard work to tell your boss that he's being intellectually and emotionally lazy. It's easier to stand by and watch the company fade into oblivion. It's hard work to tell senior management to abandon something that it has been doing for a long time in favor of a new and apparently risky alternative. It's hard work to make good decisions with less than all of the data.
The everyday hard work is speaking our opinions for the good of the project and the organization while doing so skillfully.
I will continue to write about the linguistic action perspective (LAP) of project management. One significant impediment to adopting the LAP approach is dealing with the misplaced fear of being out-of-control. (Isn't control just an illusion?) As Seth goes on to say,
Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you'd rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And, after you've done that, to do it again the next day.
Succeeding on projects is all about taking risk. The risk of sharing one's views and exploring others' views — all for the sake of pleasing the customer. Remarkable!
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July 8th, 2003 at 3:30 pm
Hal
I know I am late, but I was reading about hardwork in your weblog.
It is like to be in the war. To survive or to stay alive, first you must accept that you are dead.
It is hard to deal with our fears, but we must understand that in breaking downs the fear keeps you aware.
In hardwork our sensing must stay in a high level. It is stressing but I can say to you that we learn to enjoy our life much more.
When you find a way to solve a problem facing a breaking down it is like to return home after the war
I love this sensation I feel alive!
Another day I was at my office trying to solve a problem and it happened at the end of the day. I do not remember everyhting I did to solve it but I can tell you how beautifull were the colours of the sunset from that day!
I hope you could spend sometime with me in Virginia. I have a lot to learn.