Seth Godin published his newest ebook book today — all 464 pages and 2.4 Mb. Bull Market 2004 is timed to coincide with the release of Free Prize Inside, The Next BIG Marketing Idea on May 11th. He is selling the ebook for $21 with all proceeds going to Room to Read. He's allowing any company or blogger mentioned in the ebook to give it away. If you like the book I urge you to go make a donation.

Aside from featuring Reforming Project Management in the ebook, why would someone interested in project management care about this book? Bull Market 2004 is a collection of companies and individuals who Seth says can help you make something happen. I know that I could use some help with my projects. Whether I get stuck, or I just need some help, these are companies that can take your project to the edge. Seth claims that being on the edge is what makes our products and projects remarkable.

Have a look at Seth's books and the associated websites. Quite the projects.

Clarke Ching offers his take on Free Prize Inside, The Next Big Marketing Idea: They "traded autonomy and craftsmanship for high pay and stability". "(P)age 43, sent a wee shiver up and down my spine." Read on…

Too much of our time on projects is spent working alone. Programmers code by themselves. Estimators estimate by themselves. Architects detail alone. To make it worse, many companies have erected closed spaces — offices with closed doors, cubicles with 6′ walls — and other impediments for making collaboration the usual practice. Project work so often requires innovation and learning. Both occur in a social context. That context is collaboration.

The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week

025: Collaborate, Really Collaborate

Whether you believe two are smarter than one, or three are smarter than two, all but trivial projects depend on more than one person to complete. Large projects might number in the thousands of performers. Why isolate people from each other. Learning and innovation are both social processes. Judgement also benefits from broad perspectives and experience. Here are 5 questions to get you started to make collaboration your habit: Who could help me with this? What do I have to offer others? What new ways can we meet on a regular basis? How can we stay in tune with each others' changing project work? What can you do to be more responsive to each other? Share this e-Tip with your team at your next meeting. Use the five questions to generate actions you will take as a group. Revisit how you are doing each time you meet. The Project Leaders' Studio™

©2004 Hal Macomber | weblog.halmacomber.com | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip

Write me about your experience with this and feel free to share this Project e-Tip with others.

Seth Godin writes a monthly column in Fast Company where he rails against our attachment to our common sense. There are too many favorite Seth Godin FC essays for me to mention here. Now I have a 'new favorite'. It appears in his new book Free Prize Inside.

The book is about going all the way to the edge as the place from which to innovate. The edge is a free prize. Not just another feature. Rather, working at the edge we have the opportunity for creating something remarkable. Seth calls it edgecrafting.

The 'new favorite' essay appears on pages 46 and 47 of the book titled You Can Wreck the Factory Where You Work by Following the Rules. The same can be said for projects. Here are some highlights:

We've fooled ourselves into thinking that white collar work is supposed to be as repetitive and rule-based as running a punch press. So we often fight the innovations in our midst.

Why do we see this as acceptable? Rather than asking, "What will it take for this to be successful?" we encounter sabotage, foot-dragging, and inaction. For me the worst is the attitude "Let's see if this will work."

We've embraced the upside of Henry Ford's bargain (getting paid a lot for work someone else could do), but since change has become the essential output of our work, we've abandoned our half of the deal. Idea workers get paid to change the rules.

Your job is to make something happen.

Don't put up with people who are not intent on making something happen, particularly when that someone is you.

Seth Godin is at it again. This time there's something for us to learn about projects. His last book Purple Cow was the number one selling marketing book of 2003. I got my hands on a prepublication copy of Free Prize Inside. Seth has selected my weblog to include in a 500 page ebook that will be published concurrently with Free Prize Inside. He also selected fellow bloggers Johanna Rothman and Clarke Ching. The ebook is titled Bull Market 2004: Companies that Can Help You Make Things Happen (I'll provide copies to readers of this weblog.) He did something similar with Purple Cow by concurrently publishing 99 Cows. (See my postings from my visit with Seth last year.)

So what does a book on marketing have to do with projects? Marketing is all about projects. Every campaign, product launch, introduction to new market, etc. involves going from idea to implementation. Seth devotes the middle third of the book to selling your idea and building a team around you. You need to read the book for his advice on leverage alone. (Levers only work with a fulcrum.)

Here's the condensed version of Free Prize Inside. Still not sure that Seth knows anything about projects? Then check out this PMI announcement. Seth is the featured speaker at the up-coming Project Management Confab in Bloomington, IL.

It's been awhile since I've published a Project e-Tip. The coming five e-Tips will be follow the themes that I see are shaping the work we do. This first one tightly couple learning with action serves as the basis of working in a lean fashion. Take time to explore what it can mean for you, your team, and your customer.h

The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week

024: Tightly Couple Learning with Action

We learned from Toyota not to produce in large batches. Doing so creates wastes in storage, in tracking, in rework, in movement, and in space. Toyota's goal is single-piece flow at the signal of the customer. But why is it so important to do just one at a time. The answer is we want to learn from each action we take. Toyota sees it as the opportunity to test and re-test their hypothesis of how to do work effectively. Here's five ways you can begin adopting the principle tightly couple learning with action on your projects: Meet at the end of each day for just 5 minutes with the last planners on your project to give them the opportunity to report on the work they finished for the day as they had promised to do. Identify at that time any reasons for not finishing promised work. Replan as necessary. Do detailed planning for short horizons (6 weeks). Review the outcome, then do more detailed planning. Conduct a plus-delta review at the end of each planning meeting. Start the next meeting by referring back to the last review. Select one item from that list for focus during the meeting. Have a conversation with the whole team on something that needs improvement. Take action based on an 80% complete solution. Try it out. Review the results. Then create an 80% solution for the balance of the issue. Attack the delays on your project. Explore with your team what keeps them from more closely coupling one person's work with another's work. Do an experiment. Learn. Re-do the experiment. Put these to work on your project immediately. Start by discussing this Project e-Tip with your team. You might want to create a contest with them to see who can generate the most ways for coupling learning with action. The Project Leaders' Studio™

©2004 Hal Macomber | weblog.halmacomber.com | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip

I'd like to hear your experience working with this. Please leave a comment or send me an email.

So much is made of picking a project team. But what about the rest of us who get who we get. What are we to do? In the latest article offering advice on forming teams, Kathleen Melymuka writing for Computer World urges project managers to build a balanced team in How to Pick a Project Team (Tech) Skills Are Only the Beginning.

A great project team requires more than technical skills. It takes the right mix of "soft" skills, personalities and attitudes to gel and achieve results.

• Fewer Is Better — Small project teams perform better than large ones due in part to the few interpersonal relationships/
• Attitude Counts — Look for people with positive attitudes
• Diversity Lowers Risk — Different styles and perspectives counterbalance
• Familiarity Breeds Action — Teams take time to work effectively
• Availability Trumps Everything — Who's available can determine the outcome
• Leverage Matters — Establish a relationship with customers and those who have staff for your project

Ok. Good advice for people who can put their teams together. So, what do we do when we come together as strangers? Project managers can create those attributes among the people who come together. It starts by publicly acknowledging the situation.

• Big projects require big teams. Can you reduce the number of members on your team? Maybe not, if you've contracted with a large number of companies. But you can operate in smaller groupings.
• We all have the experience of the contagiousness of attitudes, both good attitudes and bad attitudes. Keep an ear out for signs of attitudes that are not good for the circumstances of your team. Intervene at the earliest opportunity.
• While diversity may lower risk, ya got what ya got. Take the opportunity to explore the strengths and talents of the people who show up. Offer assignments that put those talents to best use.
• Projects may not be long enough for people to become effective team mates when we come together as strangers. But, it only takes three actions from the leader to accelerate the process: publicly explore intentions, cultivate commitment-making, and engage the group in short daily conversations.
• People are available or they're not. But don't be a victim of that. Engage in everyday practices for readying the upcoming work. See that all wherewithal is in place including the people to perform the task.
• Getting what or who you want is a long term strategy. When people know you as a project manager who takes care of the people on the project, then you will have people clamoring to be on your project. There's no greater leverage than that.
• The author and her respected interviewees encourage you to hold out for the people you want and need to do your project. If you can do that, great! Otherwise, create that situation among the people who show up.

While it is the special case where we can choose our whole team, we often can pick some of our team members. Even on low-bid construction projects we can choose from the available staff. But building a performing team requires skills for taking a group of strangers and turning them first into friends, and then into partners.