Scott Belsky on project management

In Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming Obstacles Between Vision & Reality published by Portfolio/Penguin (2010), Scott Belsky introduces what he calls the Action Method and urges his reader to use it to “question many of the traditional practices of project management. For example, “the most productive people run their own parallel processes to accomplish projects [i.e. strategic objectives] more flexibly. These homegrown systems share a common set of principles.

1. A relentless bias toward action pushes ideas forward. Always be results-driven. Always.

2. Stuff that is actionable must become personal. Each task must be assigned an owner as well as a deadline.

3. Taking and organizing extensive notes aren’t worth the effort. Focus on completion of specific, sequential Action Steps.

4. Use design-centric systems to stay organized. “The color, texture, size, and style of the materials used to capture Action Steps are important.

5. Organize in the context of projects, not location. Use a project/task-centric approach rather than a location-centric approach.

Bronwyn Fryer on where the Boomers will find jobs

Here is an excerpt from article written by Bronwyn Fryer for the Harvard Business blog. To read the complete article, share it with others (e.g. unemployed or under-employed Boomers), check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.

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Where the Boomers Will Find Jobs

If you’re an older manager who’s been laid off (or is under threat), the future probably looks pretty bleak. Do you take a job at Walmart or work part time? You might lie awake at night and stare at the ceiling, asking yourself: What will happen to my family? My savings? My way of life?

You may also recall — with a bit of bitterness — all the rosy projections of think tanks and experts who predicted that there would be plenty of work for people in the baby boom generation going forward. For example, in 2004, HBR authors Ken Dychtwald, Tamara Erickson, and Bob Morison wrote a seminal article called “It’s Time to Retire Retirement” in which they argued that, given the imminent retirement of millions of boomers, “we’ve recently passed what will prove to be a historic low in the concentration of older workers. Just when we’ve gotten accustomed to having relatively few mature workers around, we have to start learning how to attract and retain far more of them.”

Sigh.

These projections were made before the Great Recession dried up millions of jobs and, simultaneously, retirement funds for people who once looked forward to their sunset years.

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Fryer introduces Barry Bluestone, Dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, “with heartening news.” Bluestone, who has a serious track record in labor market analysis (and who carries a Medicare card himself), reiterates the findings of demographers like Dychtwald re where employment will be among least 5 million estimated potential job vacancies in the United States by 2018. (Bluestone’s research is one of four papers written by independent experts, all of which can be found at www.encore.org/research.

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Bronwyn Fryer is a contributing editor to Harvard Business Review.

David Lee Roth and the Parable of the Brown M&M’s

Here’s a story that is brilliant in its insight and simplicity. I read it in The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande.

Van Halen wanted no brown M&M's

David Lee Roth (Van Halen) has an obscure demand in his contract for his concerts.  He wants/demands a bowl of M&M’s backstage, with no brown M & M’s in the bowl:  “with every single brown candy removed, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation to the band.”  At least once, he followed through on his threat.

At first glance, this sounds like a typical over-the-top demand from a rock star too full of himself.  But, in fact, it is a brilliant demand.  The contract is full of very important issues – the strength of the stage, the quality of the wiring, and much more.  People can get hurt when tasks are done poorly or not completed in a big stage show such as his.

Said Roth:

“When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl, well, we’d line check the entire production.  Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error…Guaranteed you’d run into a problem.” The mistakes could be life threatening.

This reminds me of a quote from Heb Kelleher (I’m sorry – I don’t remember which book I read it in).  It went something like this:  “if the rest rooms on our planes are not clean, then the passengers think that the engines might not be well-maintained.”

The lesson:  Sweat the big stuff.  And, have a check on something small to make sure the big stuff is handled well.

All help is self-help – all persuasion is self-persuasion

Mincing no words, Seth Godin gets to the point (as he frequently does!).  Here’s part of what he wrote:

Self-help

If you read a book that tries to change you for the better and it fails or doesn’t resonate, then it’s a self-help book.
If you read a book that actually succeeds in changing you for the better, then the label changes from self-help book to great book.
By the way, the only real help is self-help. Anything else is just designed to get you to the point where you can help yourself.

I agree.  And, just as all real help is self-help, all persuasion is self-persuasion.  A lot of people write and speak a lot of words hoping for one thing – that you will listen to their arguments closely enough and well enough to change your own thinking, feeling, or behaving/acting.

They can’t make you change (maybe they could – but that would be coercion, not persuasion).  Their best hope is to give you tools to help you change for yourself.