Tom Peter's Project 50

The Project 50 - Fifty Ways to Transform Every "Task" into a Project that Matters

Written by Tom Peters, Published in 1999.

Part I: Create

1. Reframe. Never - ever - accept a project/ assignment as given.


2. Translate your daily experiences into 'cool stuff to do'. Look for ways to learn - Golden Learning Opportunities


3. Use the word "WOW!"


4. Adopt an attitude that there are no small projects... then remember that any activity can be converted into a WOW!


5. Put on the brakes - if the project won't be Memorable/ Braggable/ WOW! then ditch it quickly.


6. Design the project until you love it.


7. Make the project beautiful.


8. Beauty/ Grace/ Friendliness/ Identity/ WOW/ Magical Moments: Design it to make it happen


9. Make the project Revolutionary


10. Use the web to spice it up


11. Impact: Make it Matter... you can count on pissing a few people off.


12. Create RAVING FANS - Clients who L-O-V-E your stuff... Especially women (including explicitly catering to their needs).


13. Go on a Crusade!


14. Make your environment work for you - have a cachet of goodies!


15. Does your WOW project sing to you from your resume?


16. Work with a team of diverse people


17. Treat the WOW Project like a small business


18. Make deadlines!


19. Find a Wise Friend: You need a counselor


20. Network - use your team... co-conspirators. Think "user" from the start.


21. Carry a little card that reads "WOW!/ BEAUTIFUL!/ REVOLUTIONARY!/ IMPACT!/ RAVING FANS!
    
    

    Part II: Sell



22. Sales: Brevity - create a succcint WOW Project sales pitch. Metaphor time


23. Sell to anyone and everyone at all levels in the organisation


24. BUZZtime is all the time


25. Expand the network - do your 'community work'


26. Supporters are supporters, no matter when they sign on.


27. Look after your friends


28. Forget your enemies


29. Create an Advisory Board: MASTERMIND... you are as cool as the cool people who are seen to be supporting you


30. Live lite - get rid of the crap


31. Test and prototype and reinvent the concept - FAST
    
    

    Part III: Implement



32. Chunk - test - try


33. Live, Eat, Sleep, Breathe, Prototype! Create a culture of prototyping!


34. Play!


35. Get feedback fast! Especially from the 'real world'


36. Blow it up and start again


37. Recruit the best - continuously!
    
    Humor: laugh as you work!


38. Create a Master Document


39. Make short lists - get rid of useless information


40. Timeline - reign supreme.
    
    Wanted: Ms. Last Two Percent - finishing fanaticism is what separates 'pretty good' from 'WOW'


41. 15 minute meetings - get in and get out Fast.
    
    The succinct, summary morning meeting matters!


42. Celebrate - success is obvious, though also failure as a stepping stone to success!


43. Don't let the exigencies of "implementation" distract you from WOW!


44. WOW Projects have identity, spirit, personality: focus on these


45. Embrace the suits - cast the fan club net more broadly


46. Focus on the user - more than ever now


47. Concoct a Buzz Management Program: Permanent Campaign.
    
    Implementation = Marketing
    
    

    Part IV: Exit



48. Mainstream the idea and get out!
    
    Take succession planning seriously.


49. Seed your freaks into the mainstream... spread the word of WOW!


50. Write up your WOW Project.
    
    Celebrate
    
    Move on to the next WOW Project!

Review of "Al Dunlap"

What a great review of the Chainsaw...

1. Develop an Inner Circe
   Build a close team who can push the best from each other. Bring people with you to a new organisation who you've worked with before - in a new situation, get new ideas through new people.
2. Invest in planning and training
   Compress time scales by moving the target forward. If the outcome is due Thursday, ask if it is finished Tuesday. Tell people repeatedly what you want them to remember. Set awesome due dates to get your team to strictly discipline themselves.
3. Develop fast opinions regarding staff competencies
   Ask the same question in different way on different days to evaluate the consistency and effectiveness of their thinking. Don't hold on to the people who caused the problems in the first place.
4. Business is simple
   Set major, attainable goals. Hold people accountable. Focus on the goals. Don't complicate matters - just make things happen.
5. Small executive staff
   Make the executive a powerful team who are completely accountable.
6. Make no big decisions where there are lots of people
   Meetings with more than 12 people lead to no results. 6 people is a better number to bring together to actually resolve a situation.
7. Create opportunities to train people - to get them to make things happen.
   

Attitudes

1. Continually attack costs
   Slice the fat first: cut jobs from HQ - deal with the Unions last
   Reduce the numbers of suppliers - make them competitive. Leverage volumes, encourage bidding and remember that nobody has you forever.
2. Be ruthless - give loyalty to merit only.
3. Focus on your core business
   Ask yourself, "What business are we in?" "What business should we be in?"
   Do the right things consistently. Find ways to grow the company: improve and innovate. Minimise the breadth of focus - the number of businesses.
4. Strategy: find a vision and a mechanism for making that vision into reality.
   Consistently review your process - take risks
   

Characteristics of Power Performers

• Be detached from public perception.

• Think of life as
• "An adventure (don't analyse as good and bad: it's all life!)
• "I am totally responsible (don't blame circumstances, other people or events for where you are now)
• "Choices - destiny is not waited for, it is to be achieved. Nobody has no choice; nobody has to go to work.
• "The journey is the thing - intensity of life is awesome. Personal satisfaction, rather than external awards are the meaning of life. Distinguish objectives from day dreams: objectives - you plan, take time, are written and motivating, and demand you to make things happen.
• "Experience success before achievement - focus on your outcome, and imagine achieving the target. Become an achiever.
• "Don't let others drag you down - ask advice from people who know, not people who talk.
• "If you want things to change, change yourself. And create a positive expectancy.
• "Create opportunities for effortless brilliance
• "Make money work for you - it is not the outcome, but you need lots of it to get by in life. So be valuable! To achieve this, become an entrepreneur
• have passion for what you do,
• do things that you would do even if there was no pay,
• develop marketable skills,
• develop yourself,
• make money work for you,
• find new directions to generate new sources of money,
• ... Become entrepreneurial - motivate, evaluate and action.
• "Define your focus - do the most we can do in your time. Setting realistic, specific and motivating goals lead to achievement.
• "Enhance your time - don't squander it!
• Try to see and do everything. How?
• Spend only 8 hours at work: get more done through creativity.
• Take the pressure out of the job
• Spend time with your family
• Make yourself more promotable
• Get a reputation for reliability
• Maximise the effectiveness of your time
• Focus on one thing at any one time.
• Adapt a daily planner to yourself
• Prioritise your outcomes
• Set challenging deadlines
• Control your interruptions: nobody should drop in, close your door sometimes, discourage face-to-face contact in favor of phone/email etc
• Read everything once - deal with things
• Have lunch at an odd hour
• Call people: don't visit them!
• Don't think things over - if you have enough information, decide. If you need more information, find out what information you need!
• Use your planner every day."
• Fear immobilizes - to convert fear into fortune, face your fears head on!
• "Put love in your life - love life through doing what you can do best!
  

The Seven Traits of Achievers

1. Let go in the past; live in the present. You are fully responsible for your life now; clean up past relationships; forgive yourself.
2. Eliminate concern for the future - live in the present!
3. Develop an even, rational disposition
4. Don't just make a profit: be fun and be different!
5. Enjoy life today
6. Rise above the need to have people like you
7. Rise above the need to impress others.
   

The Future

• Everything is moving faster: multicultural, global and fast changing economy.
• Continued leadership will only come through reinventing the system. The control of technology will become the new power. Don't ever do just enough to get by! Fear is borne by ignorance: look for the edge. 3M employs 10% more people than they need - that way, people spend time being creative...
• Become an intellectual entrepreneur - they are the trillionaires of the next century!
• Be a leader - be true to yourself. Become a lifelong learner. Use: futurepacing and curiosity. Always think of yourself as a student, else knowledge can stifle you. Don't allow yourself to become a drone.

A Reading List...

Thinking and Learning Skills

• Win Wenger
  
• Paul R. Scheele
  
• Super Teaching, Eric P. Jensen
  
• Supermemory, Douglas Herrmann
  
• Edward de Bono
  
• Think Like a Genius, Breaking the Mind Barrier; Todd Siler
• Tony Buzan
• Flow, Mihaly Cz...
  

Financial Intelligence

• Unlimited Wealth, Paul Zane Pilzer

• Robert Kiyosaki (Great reading, though very little real content in
  my opinion)

• Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill

• One Minute Millionaire, Mark Victor Hansen and Robert G. Allen

• What Rich People Know and Desperately Want to Keep a Secret, Brain
  Sher
  

Getting Things Done

• How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People, Jonar Nader
• The 48 Laws of Power, Robert Green and Joost Elffers
• How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
• Thick Face Black Heart, Chin-ning Chu
• The Art of War, Sun Tzu
• A Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi
  

Entrepreneurship

• René Rivkin
• Charles Handy
• Paul Zane Pilzer
• Warren Buffet
• Bill Gates
• Richard Branson
  

The Nature of the Universe

• Elbert Hubbard
• The Future Just Happened, The New New Think; Michael Lewis
• Money and Power (The History of Business), Means
• The Commanding Heights, Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw
• Ayn Rand
• The Secrets of the Rainmaker, Chin-ning Chu
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey
• Wayne Dyer
  

Paul Zane Pilzer is an Economist who writes about a LOT of things. You want to read him. He wrote a book called "Unlimited Wealth" a few years ago... I've already got it. You'll read it too, sometime after Rivkin.

Review of First, Break All the Rules

Written by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman...

• Includes 12 questions for measuring workplace strength.


• Always draw the best from the people around you.


• Select for talent to get the right person.


• Define the right outcomes to make clear expectations


• Focus on strengths to expand and motivate the person


• Find the right fit to develop them

Facets of Selection

• Knowledge - information and awareness (factual or experiential)


• Skill - how to do something, trainable, basics


• Talent - hardwired patterns: why (motivations), how (thinking patterns)
  and who (people/ relationships)


• Also look at competencies, habits, attitudes and drive


• Spend the most time with your best people


• Handle weaknesses: create a support system (like spectacles), find
  a partner to help or find an alternative role.


• Clues to talent - rapid learning, personal satisfactions

Keys to Talent

Outcome focus; Value world-class performance in every role; Study the
best; Teach the language of greatness.

Selection

Striving	Relating	Thinking
Achiever Kinesthetic Stamina Competition Desire Competence Belief Mission Service Ethics Vision	Woo Empathy Relator Multirelator/ networker Interpersonal intelligence Individualised perception/ different perspective Developer Stimulator Team Positivity Persuasion Command Activator Courage	Focus Discipline Arranger Work orientation Gestalt Responsibilty Concept Performance orientation Strategic thinking Business thinking Problem solving Formulation Numerical Creativity

Summary of Lester Thurow's Creating Wealth

Lester Thurow expresses some interesting and empowering ideas...

1. Knowledge is the commodity of our age
2. Wealth is desirable. Investment can make you comfortable, but never wealthy
3. Reinvent yourself regularly - cannibalising your old behaviors!
   Difference and disequilibrium is opportunity.
   These may be technological (eg online education), developmental (copy from the developed world to the undeveloped world) or sociological (demographic changes eg increased need for nursing homes). Everything else is simply a commodity.
4. Recognise weaknesses and use them where it is irrelevant
5. Inflation is better than deflation
6. Entrepreneurial skills are fragile: they involve destruction of the old! But, entrepreneurs are the emperors of the world! Skilled workers, telecommunications and transport, research and development are all areas that survive because of the entrepreneur.
7. Embrace change - order is necessary, though not as important is change!
8. Basic research pays - if ownership is clear.
   Adult education is vital - skills count first; yet the young learn more quickly (especially within private education)
9. Take responsibility to have your own career
10. Those interested in the future build tools.
11. Economic progress is equivalent to environmental progress
12. Luck is necessary - beyond talent, drive and persistence.
13. Nothing grows unless productivity grows