Adding some wow to our projects

Every now and then I like to scan the home library and see if anything I hadn’t read deserves to be promoted, or if something I read long ago deserves another look. Tom Peter’s “The Project 50” fit the latter category. I was not a always huge fan of Peters until I heard him speak at a Fast Company event back around 2000. And to use his favorite word, it was a Wow. This was the period when he was pitching Wow projects, and I felt that he right on the money. I think I’ve assimilated a lot of his ideas, but as I flipped through the pages of The Project 50, I decided to dig back in.

The basic premise was the nature of work was shifting to project work, and the opportunity was to turn “even the most routine task into a WOW! Project….A WOW! Project…wows! (Period).”

The relatively short book offers “fifty way to transform every task into a project that matters.” I decided to highlight 5 of these to focus on given where I am in my current situation at work, along the lines of: what are five things I could do to bring some wow to my work. I thought I’d share with you, and perhaps inspire y’all to think of ways to bring more wow to your work.

So here are the ones I highlighted and a few notes I took:

• Do your “community” work. Start to expand the network. ASAP. Talk your “it” up everywhere (Wow project champions never meet an audience that’s too small). Present the project to a wider audience. Take community concerns into account, but don’t compromise the dream; know when to advance, and when to retreat with grace. But never, ever stop. Make a list of 25 target supports, and get at least three lunches scheduled in the next two or three week.
• Preach to the choir! Never forget your friends! Don’t take supporters for granted. Keep them informed. Ask for feedback on anything and everything
• Metaphor time. The pitch – and every aspect of the project – works best if there is a compelling theme/image/hook that makes the whole thing cohere, resonate, and vibrate with life. A compelling metaphor is the story…distilled, enhanced to a picture/image/five-words-or-less.
• Live, eat, sleep, breathe: prototype! Become an unabashed prototype fanatic. There is no situation where you cannot concoct a sorta-real-work micro-test of some piece of your project…within a few hours to two or three days; refers to Schrage’s Serious Play.
• Think timelines/milestones. No tool is more important than the living to-do list; it must be simple to a fault. Timelines in the near term are cast in stone…post prominently

A few reflections. My first two around networking and community are really coming at me (so-to-speak). I suppose over the years I’ve waxed and waned a bit around these – sometimes doing well and others times not-so-much (usually when I get swamped in projects…no excuse, but it happens). It’s a bit of a challenge to me as an introvert, but I’m always glad when I do it. A lesson for me has been to set “reasonable-for-me” goals. If I set the bar too high, I will tend to avoid. If it’s not too intimidating, then I will actually do it!

So, what are working on to make your projects wow? Or, what should you be working on? Andy Hines