Tagged with: al gore • big hairy audacious goals • essentials • Freestyling • goals • Hayagreeva Rao • hot causes • quest • seth godin • talent • tom peters • tribes • wow projects
In case you’re really, really wondering where the quote “Don’t look at me …” is coming from … I’m shy.
You got to love Tom Peters. This management Uber-Guru is passionate when it comes to the topic of leadership, organizations and, of course, management. The co-author of the 80s-classic “In Search Of Excellence” published a report titled “Project05: “PSFs” Are “Everything,” CEOs Are Idiots, MBAs Should Be Abolished, Lord Nelson Had All the Answers, and More”.
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In it he paints a picture of organizations that are nothing more but vehicles to facilitate talent coming together to achieve a certain purpose. The talent is everything. Or, more in Peters style: EVERYTHING! Companies should go overboard in nourishing and treasuring the professionals.
He raises an excellent point: how do organizations get the best talent? If you want to get and keep talent, you should make your projects worthwhile. Something people would love and enjoy doing. Peters even has a name for this: WOW! Projects. If you see the project, if you hear about the project, if you participate on the project, there is only one thing you can say: wow.
I always thought people were important. Good people that is. I knew the power of doing something you like. But the Project05 report influenced me so much, I started chanting the same thing. Talent is EVERYTHING! And you need WOW! Projects.
Hot Causes And Cool Solutions
This observation is not unique. Although Peters rants are one of a kind, the need for fabulous people with a cause is an observation done by more leading thinkers. In the book “Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations“ by Hayagreeva Rao the concept of “Hot Causes and Cool Solutions” is used to illustrate how to activate crowds.
“A hot cause like deaths from tobacco or medical errors can be used as springboards to raise awareness, spark motivation, and ignite red-hot outrage. … But creating the heat isn’t enough; the next step needs to be cool solutions. This doesn’t just mean identifying technically feasible solutions, it also means finding ways to bind people together, to empower them to take steps that help solve the problem…”,
Tribes
More of my favorite authors have toyed with this idea. Master marketing blogger Seth Godin wrote in 2008 “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us“. According to Godin, Tribes are groups of people aligned around an idea, connected to a leader and to each other. The central element of a tribe is the leader and the idea, the goal. You need a leader who can inspire, one that can present Big Audacious Goals that seem to rock the world. Al Gore is a prime example. He has collected a huge global tribe around the concept of “Save the planet” (or “global warming awareness” if you want).
The overall suggestion to allocate a group of great people is to have something worthwhile.
“Worthwhile” doesn’t mean the same for everyone. My example of Al Gore generates always discussion with people who don’t agree to the cause and the leadership. What seems exciting for the first person, might be perceived in absolute boredom by the next (so boring). I love the web. Love it. Adore social media. Adore it. Although I am not unique in that sense, I know personally some lovely people who could care less about my new shiny technology discoveries.
A cause is only a cause when it resonates with you. “WOW” is a scream of excitement. Not everyone will be wowed by the same project.
The pursuit of something worthwhile is The Quest. Be A Freestyler. Bootstrap Your Team Culture.
No, talent is not everything.
Besides, what is talent? Is that some generic feat or something? One can be talented painter and suck at singing. One can be talented back-end developer and at the same time create the ugliest user interface on earth.
I would go even further. You can end up in a team of decent workmen but no stars (in terms of talent). Are you doomed? I don’t think so. With some effort you can achieve pretty good results.
It is still all about people.
Indisputable facts say that 20% of people do 80% of the work or generate 80% of work ideas. I think a project without some of the 20% talented people would end up doing lots of work doing the wrong or unnecessary work. The proof is that more than 50% of projects fail to complete on time or within budget. Talented, creative and emotional PMs are needed if projects are to complete with efficiency and effectiveness.
A second point is the complexity of projects and types of interactions among workers and their emerging complexity. The more these interactions are complex, the more we need talents with ability to learn, modify and then advance with the project.
It is alot about people – what kind of people may i ask? ‘talented ones’, ‘decent workmen’? Whatever we may call the people who achieve outstanding projects results; we must admit that it takes somebody with that extra … to put together a team which achieves an outstanding result, in a manner that the outcome does not fade away. It is everything about personality, geniun personality. What we all are made of and this is usually similar but never thesame. how do we get this variety into a delicious ‘salad bowl’, with all its colourful contents shining, making a good blend without crushing (turning into a soup bowl) and losing the identities of its components towards a unified purpose.
In the end, the main point from Tom Peters is that organizations should do their utmost best to get the best out of everyone, and professionals should get the best out themselves.
In other words: mediocrity is not the goal.
Talent, in Peters words, are the “people”, the professionals.
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