Dance Party

Derek Sivers gave a TED talk about how first followers are themselves engaging in a form of leadership, and it's been getting a huge amount of buzz. It was based on this video:





After he gave the talk, he wrote a post saying that a lot of people told him that he should write a book, go on a speaking tour, or do something else with this big idea. The only problem: he didn't want to. He has other projects he's working on that are more important to him, so he gave away the idea to anyone that wanted to do something with it.

A friend of his named Andrew Dubber then picked up on this theme and became a first follower of sorts. Instead of taking the idea and writing a book though, he's becoming a first follower by publishing one idea a day for 30 days starting March 3rd, and he's giving them away.

I thought this was in itself a pretty cool idea.

But then I remembered a post Derek wrote titled Ideas are just a multiplier of execution, where he explains that a great idea with no execution or lousy execution isn't really worth all that much - maybe $20. A weak idea with brilliant execution though could be worth $10,000,000.

So unless one of Andrew's ideas are executed on, then they're just a bunch of blog posts. Which is fine I suppose, but that doesn't really do the whole thing justice.

So now I'm going to be Andrew Dubber's first follower of sorts, but again in a different way.

Here's what I'm doing:

I am committing to executing on - and shipping - one of Andrew Dubber's ideas by Saturday, May 1st, 30 days after his last idea will be published on April 1st. This way I'm sticking with the 30 day theme Andrew has set out, but I also reward myself for making a decision and getting to work, and penalize myself a bit for delaying my decision.

Of course, I have no clue what ideas Andrew is going to publish. I've never even heard of him until the other day, and as I write this I'm pretty sure he doesn't know I even exist in the world.

I'm going to have to pick an idea to execute based not only on the strength of the idea, but also on my ability to execute on the idea, and execute it in the time frame I've set out. "Colonize the moon", for example, is probably not going to be the idea that I choose to execute on.

But here's what kind of fascinates me. Just by doing this; by doing nothing more than making this commitment, Andrew will now know that someone is looking at his ideas and looking for one to pounce on. I think that by it's nature, this changes things in the same way that a second or third dancer changed the way the first dancer was dancing in the video.

I know of course that I won't be able to do this alone, and I'm sure to need some help, but I think it's doable, and will be a lot of fun. I should also add that I'm completely intimidated by both of these guys and part of me thinks I have no business trying to do something anywhere near their league. But I figure that's probably just my lizard brain talking so best to shut it down right now.

So Derek gave a talk, and then gave away his idea. Andrew followed his lead and is giving away his ideas for 30 days. And now I'm going to execute on one of them in public.

I think we've got a party going on here. Let's dance!

New Look

I've been wanting to update my blog from the basic Blogger template since about a day after I started it. I figured the launch of v1.4e1 should serve as enough motivation to clean this baby up a little bit. I hope you like the new look and feel free to let me know what you think.

Podcast Episode 4 - Announcing Version One for Everyone

I'm announcing today a new service that is going to be provided by Ideal Project Group, and I'm calling it Version One for Everyone - which I'll also refer to as v1.4e1. I'm really excited about it. So much so that in addition to announcing it on this blog, I've also put up a special podcast episode where I discuss the reasoning behind providing this service in more detail. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, or simply listen to the episode at the bottom of this post.

As regular readers of this blog know, Ideal Project Group has, until now, focused almost exclusively on providing project management services for a variety of organizations. In these engagements, we generally work inside a company to manage important projects, work with their people, coordinate with vendors and business partners, and drive a project to completion. We will still be doing this, and it is still a vital component of our business.

During the course of running our core business though, we've learned a tremendous amount about the web, technology, design and a host of other things. Most importantly, we've learned a lot about some great tools that can allow anyone to quickly and easily deploy amazing web solutions. Of course, you have to know about these tools, learn how to use them, and then implement them to launch your business, or service.

After listening to some very compelling reasons as to why businesses should spend time focusing on their by-products (another 37Signals inspiration/reminder), and recognizing that various friends and family members have asked me to build websites for them, I realized that I've been sitting on everything I needed to provide another service. I've gathered a ton of knowledge, and have obtained a specific skill-set that I could use to help other people quickly launch websites, blogs, podcasts, social networks, and a variety of other web/technology related things such as online payment solutions, web forms, and other things of that nature.

It took me a little while to get comfortable with this idea. I've worked within technology departments for so long as a project manager that my perception of reality had become a bit skewed. First, when you're an IT project manager, the default position is that the developers, data base administrators, and others are the resident experts in their field. As a PM, you're an expert - but in something else than the people actually creating a product. The other thing that happens when working within technology departments for a while is you begin to assume that everyone knows how to do what you're able to do. After all, I'm not a developer - I help developers. So if this is true, then everyone knows how to build a website with WordPress, publish a podcast, or integrate a simple e-commerce solution with PayPal right?

Wrong.

The truth is there's a huge percentage of the population that doesn't know a thing about some of the tools that are available to build websites. And, it's also true that I've become an expert of sorts on the web. Do I still have a lot to learn? Absolutely. But that should always be the case should it not?

The other truth is that when someone goes to a web design firm to have a website made, they often get a proposal for something that's going to cost $10,000 or more. For a lot of businesses, this cost is worth it. For others though, it's not. And if you're just getting started, your website should absolutely not be one of your biggest expenses.

The alternative is to learn how to make a nice looking site with Blogger or Wordpress or another similar solution. For some people this is great; it's exactly what I did for my business. But here's the other truth that people in technology forget sometimes: Not everyone wants to learn how to do this or spend time doing it.

A lot of times, surgeons and eye doctors don't want to learn HTML. Chefs often don't want to learn how to find, download and install Blogger templates. An outdoors outfitter may not want to spend time integrating an online reservation and payment solution.

It seems to me that there's a need for great web solutions, that can be implemented quickly with tools that already exist by someone that knows how to use them. If a developer needs to be brought in to hook things together, or customize a few things then that's great. But building everything from scratch is not the solution most people need.

So this is the new service we're going to provide. The aim is that for a really reasonable price we should be able to create and deploy a great web solution for most small businesses. We're beginning by outlining a few things we can create such as websites, blogs and podcasts, along with basic web services like setting up email addresses, domain handling and that kind of think. It may even grow into a sort of outsourced tech department kind of thing. I don't know where it'll go exactly, but this is where we're going to start.

You can get more details on this new service at http://v1.4e1.idealprojectgroup.com.

If you or someone you know wants to get a great website, podcast, or something else on the web up and running quickly, I hope you'll consider sending them our way.

Complicated software allows people to control information

Anyone that's worked with me knows I'm sort of fanatical about Basecamp, the project collaboration software by 37 Signals. There are a host of reasons as to why I like their software for managing my projects so much, but the clarity that it can provide on a project is probably it's biggest asset in my eyes.

This has had me thinking lately though about why so many organizations choose software that's more complicated, complex, and often difficult to use. I think a lot of it comes down to the paradox that difficult software can also provide a lot of comfort. Why? Because the people that know how to use the complicated software get to control the information flow.

Complete clarity on the other hand can often times be uncomfortable. As I like to do, let's take a sort of extreme example. Everyone knows the health care debate continues to rage on. Imagine for a moment how differently things would turn out if every conversation, every deal, and every compromise - with everyone involved - had to take place inside a software like Basecamp. I believe there would be an entirely different conversation, and an entirely different result. Why? No information control.

Now I don't think in most organizations there's any malice intent, it's just that when things feel comfortable, there's little incentive to change.

The clarity that easy to use software can provide goes up, down, left and right through an entire organization. No one is immune to the impact it can have. Here again, this can cause discomfort. Take an example of a Marketing VP deciding on a new logo. After all the re-designs, all the back and forth, all the tweaking, if the only thing left to do is make a decision, and there's a task for someone to "decide on new logo", that might be really uncomfortable. It shines a light on the fact that there's not really any fancy process going on, someone just needs to make a decision.

Similar examples could be drawn for every area of a company. If you're heading up the technology department, it's really easy to hide poor performance behind a curtain of tech speak and complicated software that only your group knows how to use. If your sales people, designers, or CEO could easily look at an action inside any project and chime in with their opinion, ask a question, or see that the same task is assigned to the same person and still isn't done, how would you react?

If you're managing a project and every time a milestone was missed everyone in your company knew about it, how would that make you feel? If you could easily see every important decision that was waiting to be made, how would your CEO feel?

What this all comes down to is that even though the outside world has become ever more transparent, where everyone is a reporter, everyone is an expert, and everyone can review your product, many companies are slow to adopt tools that bring this level of transparency inside their own organizations. That's too bad because this is exactly what most companies need to be doing.

Ultimately, any organization would benefit by having complete clarity on their projects in the same way that we would all benefit if the health care debate was happening inside Basecamp.

Don't spend time quantifying the obvious

It's tempting to think that quantifying everything will help you make a decision. Sometimes, this is true. The answer to a question may not be readily available, and using numbers may provide a level of clarity that will allow you to make the proper decision.

Other times though, you already know the answer. All you're doing when you spend time quantifying something that's obvious is delaying the difficult task of making a decision, wasting time, and making yourself feel better.

You're not actually doing anything to help you reach your goal though, and in fact you're spending time and energy where you don't need to.

In these instances, not only is quantifying the problem unhelpful, it's harmful and wasteful.

"But wait!" you might say, "I need to communicate to someone else why a certain decision has to be made, and the only way to do that is with numbers!" After all, it's true that there is a financial component to a lot of decisions.

This doesn't mean you have to quantify everything though. I would even argue that someone who can quickly and clearly articulate why one decision is better than another while quantifying less, is actually providing more value.

Let's take an example you may be familiar with.

Your family wants to take a summer vacation. Actually, you want to take three. Do you really need to outline your income, taxes, food expenses, clothing expenses, daycare costs, remaining vacation time, and then break out the cost of each trip to realize you can only afford one vacation?

No. You already know you can only afford one vacation. Spend time quantifying whether you can take three vacations and all you're doing is delaying the decision of which one you're going take. It feels good because you haven't closed the door on two of the possible vacations yet.

Wasteful.

This is a small example, but I think similar things happen in businesses all the time.

Do you really need to quantify everything related to bringing another designer or developer onto a project? Probably not. Sure, you need to know how much that's going to cost you, but this is an entirely different quantification than determining the expected return of the value of other projects they may or may not be working on over the course of a year.

Do you need to spend a tremendous amount of time quantifying why you should choose one vendor over another when one is clearly better? Probably not.

Do you need a complex study to tell you that the $100,000 ad in a magazine or newspaper could be better spent? No. You already know this.

The next time you find yourself spending a bunch of time quantifying things, ask yourself, is this exercise helping you come to a decision that isn't clear?

Or are you quantifying the obvious so you don't have to make a decision?