Thank you for the gifts!

It warms my heart knowing that there are some regular readers of this blog. Your time and attention is a gift that you give me every time I write, and I can't thank you enough. I hope you have a wonderful holiday and get to spend some quality time with those who matter to you most.

Thank you again, and take care this holiday season.

Who gets to define success?

I saw a comment on Twitter the other day that really bothered me. The comment went like this:

beware (and be wary) of self-promoting experts on running startups, that can only boast of minor successes...

Now, there's nothing wrong with what I think the intent of this advice is. It does make sense that we pay attention to who we're listening to and understand what they've done.

The problem with the comment though is that it suggests self promotion should come only after a certain level of "success" is achieved; and it presumes that we all have the same definition of "success". I believe neither of these to be true.

"Self-Promotion" is, at least in part, telling people what you have done, sharing with people how you got to where you are, and stating your opinions on how certain things should work. In many ways, this blog is "self-promotional." Why should there be any threshold that I have to reach in order to share my ideas with the world? And, who gets to decide what this threshold is anyway? Is it not true that in today's world, the best form of marketing is to tell a genuine story about your idea and hope that it spreads? (See Seth Godin)

Would it make any sense for someone to say: "Be wary of a new company trying to market what they sell?" Of course not.

The other problem with the comment, and I think the far more troublesome one, is that it assumes everyone's definition of success is the same. It also assumes success is some final end state that we reach, as opposed to an experience happening within a specific moment in time.

Again, I disagree.

If someone starts a website that becomes extraordinarily popular but they lose their best friend and original founding partner in the process, is that still considered a success? Not if you value true friendship over money it isn't.

If an entrepreneur runs a hugely profitable business but loses the love of their life because they were always at work, is their business still a success? Should I take their advice because their business was "successful" even if it might wreck my family?

If someone has a business for five years but they end up having to shut it down, does that make it a failure? What if it gave them 4 months every year to travel around the world? What if it gave them freedom from a 9-5 job? What if it allowed them to be with their children every summer from the ages of 12 to 17? Was their business still a "failure"? I don't think so.

If a "failed" start-up inspires a "successful" start-up in the process of self-promoting, should we still be wary?

Now, I'm sure the reason I took this comment the way I did is because I maintain a blog (self-promotion) and by most measuring sticks I think any "success" I've had would be considered "minor". I'm just a guy with a small business, one employee and a few clients. Sure, I want to get bigger and have more clients and make more money. But the notion that there is some threshold I should have to reach before promoting my business is kind of infuriating.

The thing is, no-one gets to decide what success for you is except for you. No one else gets to decide when it's time to put your ideas out into the world. You do.

If people find them worth while and valuable, they'll keep listening. That is the only validation anyone needs.

Podcast Episode Two - Interview with an Artist

In this podcast episode of "What can a project manager learn from X?", I explore what a project manager can learn from an artist.  I interviewed Harry Sidebotham, an artist who lives in Chicago, and we touched on how he goes from having an idea to a finished painting, the process involved in doing so, how he prices his work, and his advice for how to deal with other people's opinions.

Harry's paintings are amazing.  You can check out a bunch of his work on his website at http://harrysidebotham.blogspot.com.

As always, you can subscribe to this podcast in iTunes or in any RSS reader.  For those of you inclined to listen right from this site, you can simply click on the audio player below.

I sincerely hope you enjoy the show and would love to hear your thoughts.

Don't talk through the mouth of someone else

One thing I've learned the hard way is that it's very difficult to communicate to one person through another. This should be obvious right? We all played the telephone game when we were kids.

In a lot of businesses though, even when there are "open door policies", there's still sort of an unspoken (or spoken) chain of command. The problem this causes is that the message you want to deliver simply cannot be sent by someone else in the same way that you would deliver it. Tone will be different. Body language will be different. A sense of empathy or compassion may be absent. The list goes on and on.

This is why when an idea spreads through the internet it's so effective. Obviously, there's the critical piece about information traveling quickly. Just as important though is that people are brought directly to the source. If someone likes a blog post of mine, they may add a quick comment and then link to it. The new reader is hearing directly from me without a filter - which is exactly what I want.

Can you imagine what would happen if every time someone liked something on the internet they first interpreted it, then re-wrote it, and then passed it along. That would obviously be ridiculous.

Yet this is exactly what's going on in a typical organization every day.

The CEO's get their information from the VP's, who get their information from a Director, who in turn gets information from a manager. The employee who has a great idea but decides to follow the chain of command is going to have their message altered significantly.

If there's a message you want to get to someone, you need to understand that you are disrespecting that message if you put the delivery of it entirely into the hands of another person. If you need to respect your organization and it's culture that's fine, but you need to find a way for people to hear the message directly from you.

Likewise, if you're running an organization, ask yourself whether you're hearing directly from most of your people or whether most of it's being filtered. If it's the latter, are you sure the right things are being filtered out? Is there a lot of good stuff being thrown out with the bad?

Whether you're the sender or receiver, just remember that it's very difficult to talk through the mouth of another. And when it happens, the message gets altered.

iTunes Podcast Link

Project Idealism - the podcast, is now available in the iTunes store. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes with this link, and it will download only the podcast portions of this blog. You can of course subscribe to this blog and it will contain the both the text posts and a way to play the podcasts.

I hope you enjoy the new show!