By now many of your know I love Tom Peters. I'm not saying he's the best writer, or the best consultant. Who knows. What I love about Peters is he lives his life fully for all of us to see. And with that he always let's us know what he's thinking. Take this passage from his new book Re-imagine!:

MORE COLLINS, MORE CLAPTRAP
  In Jim Collins' latest, Good to Great, the author celebrates "self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy" leaders who bring about the big transformations. Examples included.
  Fine, Jim.
  Psychologist-management expert Michael Maccoby and I have frequently clashed. Not this time.
  Michael recently wrote of "larger than life leaders" ... e.g.: "egoists, charmers, risktakers with big visions." Exemplars he cites: Carnegie. Rockefeller. Edison. Ford. Welch. Jobs. Gates.
  He, of course, could have added Messier and Middelhoff and Ebbers and Lay. Nonetheless, I'll still take Michael's list over Jim's.
  While flying across the U.S. a while back, I got so agitated about "quiet" and "even shy" that I started scribbling madly on the inside back cover of the spy novel I was reading. Here's what I was able to subsequently decipher from my hen scratches:
  T. Paine/P. Henry/A. Hamilton/B. Franklin/A. Lincoln/U. S. Grant/W. T. Sherman/M. L. King, Jr./M. Gandhi/G. Steinem/W. S. Churchill/M. Thatcher/Picasso/Mozart/Copernicus/Newton/J. Welch/L. Gerstner/L. Ellison/B. Gates/S. Ballmer/S. Jobs/S. McNealy.

Jim Collins book is a must read for executives, leaders, and wanna-be leaders everywhere. I won't argue with that. I don't think Peters would either. But I've had the same feeling about the book and Collins' views that Peters' has. I just never had the guts to call it "claptrap".

I try to operate to the principle "become unconditionally constructive." As such, I am not fully expressed. I'm not saying I can't be fully expressed while operating to that principle. I'm just saying I'm not. (Peters doesn't seem to have my problem.) My dilemma: How do I say I differ with Collins without calling his writing claptrap? Here goes: Collins' "shy, self-effacing, reserved" leaders are operating at a level that is not fully expressed. They and their companies suffer in some way for that. How do I know? Because I operate that way too often myself.

Get a taste of Peters' latest work. And if you want more, Peters is online and on the phone on Monday, Nov. 10th, at noon EST. It's free. I won't miss it. How about you?

posted by Hal at 10:58 AM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

Early this morning (at exactly 1:06:47 AM EST) I received the 500th email (Bloglet) subscription to Reforming Project Management. That makes me more popular than the blog 'Left of Center' but still less popular than 'Kelly Osbourne Online'. Oh well, I still have something to shoot for.

I find it truly amazing that so many people from all over the world are interested in reading my views and engaging in dialog on the state of project management and what we can do to change it. In addition to these email readers, another 1,500 people are reading each week and an untold number are keeping up by newsreader using RSS. I can't thank you all enough for this, and yet I'll try. Here goes...

Shhhh. You're the first to hear about this. Starting in January, Greg Howell and I will be launching a monthly teleconference where we'll be having a conversation with authors of project management/leadership books. Two authors have agreed to join us. We'll be talking with others. This first series will last for 6 months. The teleconference is free. Your only cost will be a phone call. We're still working out the details so you'll have to wait before signing up. But we'll move as quickly as we can so you can read the books before we all get to discuss them with the authors.

Please leave a comment suggesting which authors you want on the line with us or send me an email.

We're really excited about this. I promise you it'll be as provocative as we can make it. (Authors, don't let that scare you away!) Keep checking back for more details on authors, dates, and how to sign-up.

BTW, please tell your friends about Reforming Project Management and encourage them to subscribe or to add this to their newsreader. The more the merrier! Again...many thanks.

posted by Hal at 10:00 AM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

When I asked for proposals for project e-Tips I never expected an author to send one along. David Schmaltz, author of The Blind Men and the Elephant, Mastering Project Work, urged me to address coherence. In all fairness to David, he provided the quotation: I provided the rest. Enjoy!

The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week

017: Produce Coherence Among Project Participants

Projects are uniquely human endeavors. As such, we have the likelihood that the interests of the team members will be in conflict with one another, at one time or another in the life of a project. Those differences can lead to significant breakdowns on your project. Webster defines coherence as "becoming united in principles, relationships, or interests." Project leaders are responsible for producing that coherence. Leadership in this blind-men-and-elephant world requires integrating disparate perspectives, not enforcing a dominant one. Our projects are poorly served by the belief, religiously defended, that leaders create meaning for their team, because they can at best only encourage some preconditions that might provoke an emerging coherence of shared meaning; acknowledging their own, personal blindness is the most prominent [precondition] among these. Producing coherence is an everyday action. The project is always on the verge on shifting to incoherence. Each person's perspective can shift on a day-to-day basis as s/he engages with family, friends, co-workers, and the world. Vigilance is required to bring disparate perspectives and interests together in a synthesis. And, that synthesis undoubtedly changes as the project and peoples' lives unfold. Quotation suggested by David A. Schmaltz, The Blind Men and the Elephant, Mastering Project Work. No book for him!

©2003 Hal Macomber | weblog.halmacomber.com | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip

I still have one last autographed 'Blind Men' left. I'm negotiating for a few copies of another book. Any offers? In the meantime, make your proposals.

posted by Hal at 8:12 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

Summary comments on my postings on Designing Breakdown-Tolerant Project Environments.

Let's start with my definition of a breakdown:

An interruption while in the midst of fulfilling ones commitment jeopardizing the completion of the commitment.

In the previous five postings I described three actions for preparing for breakdowns:

1. Make commitments at the last responsible moment by engaging in recurrent conversations exploring, "Is it time to act?"
2. Make our commitments with confidence that we have what we need to fulfill the promise.
3. Distribute accountability for the outcome of the project by
• Expand the group of people who can assess and declare breakdowns.
• Empower those people to take compensating action.

Those are the summary points. Here's my summary commentary:

Breakdowns are inevitable...in life. We've seen that as humans we must make commitments to just get through the day's events. We tell our children we'll meet them at the soccer field. We tell our spouse we'll deposit a check. We tell our mechanic we'll drop the car off before 5:00 PM. We promise throughout our day accumulating like charges on our credit card. At some moment we must make good on each commitment. Others are depending on us to do so.

Projects are exactly the same. We are continuously making and re-making or re-negotiating our commitments to complete some aspect of the project by a given time. We do this so others on the project can plan and perform their work. When anyone of us on a project fails to manage the commitments we make, or worse, when we fail to make commitments, then we bring about the situation for one breakdown after another. The failure to take our own promising seriously is the principal source of breakdowns and therefore project delays, dissatisfactions, and budget busts.

Designing our projects to be tolerant to breakdowns is simple. Deciding to take that action is another matter all together. I've laid out the steps. Now step up and make it happen.

posted by Hal at 11:55 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

I last wrote about Designing Breakdown-Tolerant Project Environments in a four-part series: [1] [2] [3] [4]. It's not complete -- my thinking that is!

I keep thinking about uncertainty and variation. One of my clients says we are preoccupied with making our futures certain. Wondering, I think we just don't have enough trust in the strength of our relatedness. The more related we are, the greater chance we have of a future that is perfect. Yes, I know this is philosophical. So am I. However, I see this like luck. There is no luck. There is only preparation meeting opportunity. (Anyone know where that came from?) The best preparation we can make is in getting connected with others. By doing so, they will take care of us as we take care of them.

So...I have more to write, particularly a summary of what I started. That'll have to wait 'til tomorrow!

posted by Hal at 8:14 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

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