Project IdealismI'm pretty excited to announce today that I have started a podcast. All episodes will be added right to this blog so you shouldn't need to modify any of your settings to hear the individual episodes. You'll also be able to subscribe to the Podcast in iTunes in a couple days after it's been approved by the folks over at Apple. The concept behind this show is "What can a project manager learn from X?"
"X" can be anything from a chef, to a professor, to a firefighter. The idea is that project managers and other professionals can learn a lot from these amazing individuals, the things they are creating, and the problems they are solving. Not normally considered "projects", they can teach us a lot about the projects we are managing and the businesses we are running.
In addition to listening to the show in iTunes or an RSS reader, I'll embed the file right here as well so you can listen to it right from one of my posts.
Birds and Monkeys
I want you to imagine for a moment a monkey swinging from limb to limb darting through a forest. It's movements are smooth and fluid as it swings from one branch to another, propelling itself through the wilderness to it's final destination.
Up above is a bird that's soaring effortlessly, gliding with the wind in a near straight line. It too is navigating her way towards a final destination.
Now imagine the bird trying to tell the Monkey that it shouldn't be swinging back and forth, moving left and right, and wasting all that energy. Clearly it should be moving in a perfectly straight line! In fact, it should learn to fly! After all, from the bird's perspective, that is obviously the best way to get around.
In the world of business, people are always asking monkeys to act like birds and asking birds to act like monkeys. It's extremely important to understand that what works well for someone else may work terribly for you.
Maybe you have a different style. Maybe your personality allows you to be more abrasive than others. Maybe your personality requires you to be less abrasive. Maybe you're more soft-spoken, or an introvert, or a raging extrovert, or whatever.
In order to know what will work for you, you need to know yourself. Take advice from people, learn from them, understand the larger narrative and put that advice to good work.
But when people start offering you advice on specific tactics - on how best to do the specific tasks of your job - be conscientious as to whether it will work for you. If it will, then that's awesome.
First though, make sure it isn't a bird trying to teach a monkey to fly.
You should use Squidoo
Do you know what Squidoo is? You very well may not but that's okay, I'm going to tell you about it. Squidoo allows you to create what they call a "Lens" very easily. It's basically a super simple way to build a web page and aggregate a bunch of information about anyone or anything that interests you.
Say you like cooking. You can pull together your favorite cooking videos from YouTube, your favorite cook books (and link to them on Amazon), and include the latest posts from your cooking blog and your latest tweets from twitter. If people come to your page, they learn about what you put together, and if they click on an ad, or buy a book through your amazon link, you can make money or donate it to charity.
It's pretty cool and you should create a lens.
I created one for my professional profile because I wanted a nice casual way to put together a bunch of information about the stuff I do. In one place I can include information about the companies I started, bring info in from my blog, consume my twitter feed, and link to my resume. I put it together really quickly and will probably be editing it a bit, but you get the point. You can visit it at www.squidoo.com/andrewwicklander.
Of course, I could have made a basic website so why choose Squidoo? Because it was easier. That, and because I already have enough websites that need a design overhaul. I didn't want to add another one to the mix.
Say you like cooking. You can pull together your favorite cooking videos from YouTube, your favorite cook books (and link to them on Amazon), and include the latest posts from your cooking blog and your latest tweets from twitter. If people come to your page, they learn about what you put together, and if they click on an ad, or buy a book through your amazon link, you can make money or donate it to charity.
It's pretty cool and you should create a lens.
I created one for my professional profile because I wanted a nice casual way to put together a bunch of information about the stuff I do. In one place I can include information about the companies I started, bring info in from my blog, consume my twitter feed, and link to my resume. I put it together really quickly and will probably be editing it a bit, but you get the point. You can visit it at www.squidoo.com/andrewwicklander.
Of course, I could have made a basic website so why choose Squidoo? Because it was easier. That, and because I already have enough websites that need a design overhaul. I didn't want to add another one to the mix.
No one can have your perspective
Perspectives are not formed over the course of a project, a job, or even a career. They are formed over a lifetime. And because of this, it is simply impossible for anyone to have your exact perspective.
We receive and process so many inputs, that the collection of them is unique to the individual alone. What we can strive for however is to broaden our perspectives, and work deliberately to share our own perspective with others.
The challenge is two-fold. On the one-hand, it's entirely possible that your (or my!) perspective has blind spots. There's information out there that might alter our view on things, but if we don't know about it the blind spots remain. The flip-side of course is that you've processed information in a way that someone else has not, and in doing so, you may have a better understanding of how to solve a particular problem. Who's right? Who's wrong? Maybe no one.
The problem is that sharing or receiving this extra bit of information may in fact have no impact whatsoever. After all, it's just one of thousands of inputs that are being processed by an individual that creates their view of the world. Is one new piece of information likely to alter things?
What can make a dramatic impact though is getting people to understand your perspective. Allowing them to see an entire collection of bits of information, through your eyes, might impact things tremendously. Likewise, by trying to understand the entire perspective of someone else, and not just individual ideas or pieces of information, you may also be transformed.
Just remember, you're still ultimately empowered or handicapped by your own perspective, because it's always unique to you.
We receive and process so many inputs, that the collection of them is unique to the individual alone. What we can strive for however is to broaden our perspectives, and work deliberately to share our own perspective with others.
The challenge is two-fold. On the one-hand, it's entirely possible that your (or my!) perspective has blind spots. There's information out there that might alter our view on things, but if we don't know about it the blind spots remain. The flip-side of course is that you've processed information in a way that someone else has not, and in doing so, you may have a better understanding of how to solve a particular problem. Who's right? Who's wrong? Maybe no one.
The problem is that sharing or receiving this extra bit of information may in fact have no impact whatsoever. After all, it's just one of thousands of inputs that are being processed by an individual that creates their view of the world. Is one new piece of information likely to alter things?
What can make a dramatic impact though is getting people to understand your perspective. Allowing them to see an entire collection of bits of information, through your eyes, might impact things tremendously. Likewise, by trying to understand the entire perspective of someone else, and not just individual ideas or pieces of information, you may also be transformed.
Just remember, you're still ultimately empowered or handicapped by your own perspective, because it's always unique to you.
On Fear
Most of what I write here tends to be pretty positive, upbeat and confident. Recently though, I started getting concerned that what I was sharing was only showing one side of my personality. I suppose it's the side that usually wins out, but it's not truly a complete picture until I give you a little more context. I don't have a ton of readers, and I truly appreciate those of you that do stop by or subscribe for updates, and I think I owe it to you to be as authentic as I can be.
So now, I want to write a little about the things that scare me. Hopefully this will paint a clearer picture of what I think about, how I process information when I make decisions, and maybe just get a little more human on you.
The thing that scares me more than anything is losing someone I love. In a probably unhealthy way, I think about death a lot. My best friend was killed in a car accident when I was 24, and this loss has had a deep and profound impact on who I am. A little over a year ago, my father was diagnosed with a brain tumor which was, thankfully, successfully removed. Six months ago, a 22 year old cousin of mine was killed in a car accident.
Whenever I'm asking myself whether I want to do something, the worst case scenario is, of course, never as bad as death. This may lead me to having a higher than appropriate risk tolerance, but it's also helped me keep things in perspective. Either way, I rarely make an important decision without understanding how little it's outcome would mean - positively or negatively - when compared to unspeakable tragedies.
I'm also afraid of economic failure; how could any small business person not be in this economy? The thing is, my fears used to be "What if I lost my job?" And I've found that, for me, being slightly more in control is less scary than relying on one employer for my income.
I worry at times that people or companies I admire will happen across my blog or my company and wonder why I'm trying to play in the same league as them.
Sometimes I wonder whether I have the authority to speak so vocally about how a project should be managed. Maybe I need one more. Maybe just a bigger one this time. But then, really, how many until this just becomes my excuse not to do something?
I worry about whether my need for complete clarity and my unwillingness to just let things go sometimes turns off talented developers. But then, if I don't press for clarity I worry that I've compromised my beliefs.
I fear trying to do too much has caused me to have a crappy website for GoFind!. Okay okay, I know this is true and it's being worked on. Hey, I had to prioritize!
Now, there may be some people who are always confident about everything they're doing. And if that works for them, then I think that's awesome. For me though, it's helpful to get a little introspective sometimes. I don't let it paralyze me, but I use it as an opportunity to understand what those fears are really telling me and quite often it helps me to solidify my opinion about something, or identify a direction I want to go in.
The main point I wanted to get across is that I don't do the things I do in the absence of fear, but in spite of it. The neat thing is, once you overcome one thing you're afraid of, it gives you the confidence to overcome another thing your worried about.
Of course, there are still many more things I haven't done, that I want to do, because I simply haven't overcome the fear yet. But it's okay, I'm pretty sure I will.
So now, I want to write a little about the things that scare me. Hopefully this will paint a clearer picture of what I think about, how I process information when I make decisions, and maybe just get a little more human on you.
The thing that scares me more than anything is losing someone I love. In a probably unhealthy way, I think about death a lot. My best friend was killed in a car accident when I was 24, and this loss has had a deep and profound impact on who I am. A little over a year ago, my father was diagnosed with a brain tumor which was, thankfully, successfully removed. Six months ago, a 22 year old cousin of mine was killed in a car accident.
Whenever I'm asking myself whether I want to do something, the worst case scenario is, of course, never as bad as death. This may lead me to having a higher than appropriate risk tolerance, but it's also helped me keep things in perspective. Either way, I rarely make an important decision without understanding how little it's outcome would mean - positively or negatively - when compared to unspeakable tragedies.
I'm also afraid of economic failure; how could any small business person not be in this economy? The thing is, my fears used to be "What if I lost my job?" And I've found that, for me, being slightly more in control is less scary than relying on one employer for my income.
I worry at times that people or companies I admire will happen across my blog or my company and wonder why I'm trying to play in the same league as them.
Sometimes I wonder whether I have the authority to speak so vocally about how a project should be managed. Maybe I need one more. Maybe just a bigger one this time. But then, really, how many until this just becomes my excuse not to do something?
I worry about whether my need for complete clarity and my unwillingness to just let things go sometimes turns off talented developers. But then, if I don't press for clarity I worry that I've compromised my beliefs.
I fear trying to do too much has caused me to have a crappy website for GoFind!. Okay okay, I know this is true and it's being worked on. Hey, I had to prioritize!
Now, there may be some people who are always confident about everything they're doing. And if that works for them, then I think that's awesome. For me though, it's helpful to get a little introspective sometimes. I don't let it paralyze me, but I use it as an opportunity to understand what those fears are really telling me and quite often it helps me to solidify my opinion about something, or identify a direction I want to go in.
The main point I wanted to get across is that I don't do the things I do in the absence of fear, but in spite of it. The neat thing is, once you overcome one thing you're afraid of, it gives you the confidence to overcome another thing your worried about.
Of course, there are still many more things I haven't done, that I want to do, because I simply haven't overcome the fear yet. But it's okay, I'm pretty sure I will.