Project Idealism

You control your calendar

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:05:00 +0000

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make in business is letting other people control the flow of their day. What usually happens is numerous managers, product owners, project managers, vendors, employees, and executives can unknowingly destroy someones day, and thereby the work that they intended to do.

They don't mean to of course. They just set up a meeting to discuss a few things with a few people, and very likely these are things that do indeed need to be sorted out. The problem is, if you don't control your calendar, everyone else will.

And when other people control your calendar you're very likely not going to be nearly as productive, or effective, as if you controlled it. So while it may seem difficult to decline that meeting, or tell a vendor that you're not available at a certain time, you're actually doing a huge favor to whoever is paying you (whether it's a customer or your employer) if you take special care to control your day.

Likewise, this extends beyond days and into weeks and months. If you're a sales person that travels often, are you really going to give a great presentation if you haven't seen your family for two weeks? I don't think so.

Everyone has certain periods of the day where they're likely to be very productive, and other parts of the day where they're more likely to be checking email, reading blogs, chatting with co-workers, or whatever else we do with our time. And we're all different.

The key is to identify which parts of your day shouldn't be touched by other people.

If you're really productive in the morning, or if you're not a morning person at all and you function better by sleeping until 9, then it's very important that you're not interrupted at 8am. Same holds true if you're most productive right after lunch.

Most people don't ever say no though because they're afraid that they're going to upset someone. In reality, if you tell someone you can't meet at a certain time, they'll most likely just say "okay" and reschedule, or better yet they'll just say that they'll cover for you and bring you up to speed later.

And any meeting where you can be brought up to speed later is a meeting you never needed to attend in the first place. Another key thing to realize is that people are not trying to ruin your day, or interrupt you too much, or steal too much of your time. They're simply trying to include you. Tell them you don't think you need to be included and they probably aren't going to mind.

Control your calendar, control your day, control your productivity. Lose control of your calendar and you lose control of your very self; and no one can function that way effectively.

Yes, no, or not yes?

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:26:00 +0000

A little while back I wrote a review about Linchpin, and I've been thinking about this book and the message it contains a bit more lately. One of the central themes is about taking initiative, not asking for permission to do things, and doing incredible and remarkable work.

I've noticed something lately that ties into this whole theme and it's around when ideas are kicked around and shared on a team. I've realized that the most common feedback you'll get sometimes is "not yes". It's not no and it's not yes. It's just "not yes".

It sounds confusing at first - but really it makes a lot of sense. Because if someone says either "yes" or "no" to you - they've just put themselves on the hook. Or more accurately, you have put them on the hook. If you fail, now it's not your fault, it's the fault of the person that gave you permission - or told you not to do something. This too is a theme in Linchpin where Seth Godin writes that very rarely do people actually say No.

It's interesting because if you start looking for this not yes "answer", you'll probably find that you get it all the time. And while at first this may frustrate you, it's actually a huge opportunity. Because what "not yes" really means is "Do whatever you want - but own it."

That's a great answer because then you can do your great creative work, make something happen, and do something amazing.

There's another opportunity here too though and it's when you're giving feedback instead of seeking it. If you think someone else has a great idea - say YES! - and own it with them. Help them make it real, help them implement it, and help them be successful. The world we live in today is amazing because just two or three people can truly accomplish awesome things. And if your motivation is not to get credit for something - but is instead to help someone implement their great idea, you'll be doing great work, and having a great time while you're doing it.

Likewise, if you think something is a terrible idea, have the courage to stand up and say NO! What if the CEO of an investment bank said NO - we're not doing Credit default swaps? What if a construction worker said NO! - we should't build another McMansion right now - and convinced the owner of the business of that reality? Think they'd be out of a job right now? I don't.

Looking back, none of this is new. People say "not yes" all the time. It's just crystalized in my brain a little more lately; maybe it's because I've been reading a lot of good books such as Linchpin, REWORK, Delivering Happiness, Drive and Flow.

So when you've got a great idea, or a new feature to implement, look for the "not yes" answer. Then, own it and go do something amazing.

Tools Matter

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:28:00 +0000

There's a bit of a meme going around about how tools don't matter, which, in my humble opinion, is completely and totally wrong. Or rather, it's incomplete. It should be called "tools dont matter when youre getting started."

The idea behind this "tools don't matter" philosophy is that you shouldn't use not having the right tools as an excuse for not doing something. The argument being - you want to be a photographer? - pick up whatever camera you have and start taking pictures. This, I agree with completely and think it's great advice.

There's a certain point however when tools are in fact critically important. Ask a designer to use a windows machine instead of a Mac and tell them their tool of choice doesn't matter. See how hard they laugh at you.

Could a surgeon slice you open with a steak knife more effectively than I could use a ten blade? Of course. But that doesn't mean she should be performing surgery without the right tools for the job.

Tools, and the ability to make and use them, are in fact a central component in our evolution and are what allowed humans to ultimately rise to the top of the food chain. The ability to create tools is something that only few animals possess, and those that do make more comfortable lives for themselves.

We reach a point in our work where tools not only matter, but that using the right ones has an enormous impact on our productivity which in turn, as I just read in Delivering Happiness, has a real impact on our overall happiness.

If you're the CEO of a 100 person company, and you start using tools that make everyone 10% more productive - that's the same thing as hiring ten more people. Go ahead - tell the business owner that just saved $1 Million in salaries, 401(k) contributions, healthcare expenses and taxes that tools don't matter.

One of the reasons I love working for myself is that I can usually use whatever I please to get a particular job done. I truly feel bad for people when they tell me that they want to use a certain piece of software for their work but aren't able to do so. Because it's akin to telling a chef that they can't use their favorite knives, or a baseball player that they can't use the bat of their choice, or a guitar player that they can't use their favorite strings.

Tools Matter.

So yes, get started on whatever it is that you want to do with whatever you have available to you. At some point though, you will start getting better and you should treat yourself to some new tools.

Because the right tools will definitely help take you to the next level.

Advice for recruiters

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Like a lot of people, whenever I'm looking for my next project I'll often times work with recruiters to find my next gig. Some folks, especially in the tech world, tend to shy away from working with recruiters because they've had so many bad experiences with them.

I don't mind working with them by default, because if they can help me find a project to work on that I would enjoy, I'm more than happy for them to take a cut of the pay. I simply look at it as a commission that I might otherwise have to pay a sales person.

Sure, I'd rather have companies come directly to me or find these opportunities myself, but I'm only one human and there's no way I can know about all the great opportunities out there - nor can I expect everyone to know who I am.

The problem though is that a LOT of recruiters are absolutely terrible at their jobs, and only a few are really great at it. This surprises me though because there seems to be a really great opportunity for people who are genuinely interested in working in that profession.

The problem most recruiters (and recruiting agencies) have is that they haven't changed the way they're doing business. Most of them seem to think that their job is to cast a wide net, pull in a bunch of resumes, sort through them, and pick out the ones they think their client may like.

The problem with this approach is that they're simply acting as middlemen. The value they're bringing is acting as a collector and a filter. I suppose this is still working a little bit right now - but it won't for much longer.

I had two completely different experiences with recruiters recently that have had me thinking about this a lot. One recruiter brought me into their office to talk about a project with a company in Chicago. After a pretty good conversation, he brought in the "account rep", who is the person that manages the relationship with the client and she started looking at my resume.

I should point out that I never only send someone my resume. In fact, I try not to send a resume at all but sometimes I give in. When that happens, I always send a link to my bio so they can check out my blog, the apps I've made, my company, my podcast, etc. Admittedly, my resume is probably pretty terrible, and it likely reflects my belief in their value.

The first thing she said was something like: "you know Andrew, when I look at your resume I get all confused. I mean, the first thing I see on here is 'founder' and I don't know - that says entrepreneur to me and my client needs a project manager - not an entrepreneur."

Apparently, never-mind the fact that the company I started was a project management company. She went on to show me an example of a resume she worked on for what their client would want to see. IT WAS AN 8 PAGE RESUME!

So I asked them, you know that link I sent you, did you click on it? Answer: no. So you haven't seen my blog? No. You haven't looked at the companies I started? No. You haven't seen any of the applications I've made? Nope. Not the Android one? No. Not the Rails app? Nope. How about Duarlander, you know, the application testing service? Nope, not that either. Did you take 20 seconds to even Google my name? No.

So you mean to tell me that you brought me out of my office, into your office, losing an entire half day of productivity to meet with you and you didn't even take the time to get to know me at all? Yep, that's right. Keep in mind, this isn't a hiring manager with 1,000 other things on their plate. It's their job to find people for their clients.

That is a bad recruiter, they insulted me, and it's what almost everyone in the industry does.

Contrast this with another person I've been working with, and who's project I'm joining. Before even speaking with me, they talked to someone else that I've worked with, they checked out my experience, they looked at some of the applications I've made, and based on that, they thought I may be interested in, and be a good fit for, their project.

Turns out, they were right. It's a great project and I'm thrilled to be working on it and it's going to be really interesting for me.

So here's the lesson I think a lot of recruiters should take. Don't think of yourself as a recruiter; think of yourself as an agent. Can you imagine a sports agent representing a ball player without knowing their batting average, or on-base percentage, or number of home runs they've hit?

Of course not.

If all you're doing is shuffling resumes around, you are becoming more irrelevant with every minute that passes. And, by the way, you're doing a huge disservice to the company's that have hired you.

But, if you're getting to know some great people, understanding what their interests are, and matching them with opportunities that they'd be interested in that they might not otherwise know about, you'll rise to the top as the rest of your industry crumbles.

Out of order

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:33:00 +0000

I've been thinking lately about the steps we (often) go through when we want to learn something new. It's the way our schools educate our kids, the way we prepare for jobs, and sometimes learn new hobbies. Usually it goes something like this:

1) Decide you want to do something

2) Learn how to do it

3) Start doing it

I've realized that these steps are out of order though - at least for me, and probably for a lot of other people too. Instead, I think it's much better to flip the second and third steps. Decide you want to do something, start doing it, and you'll inevitably learn how to do it. Sure, you'll mess up a buch along the way but who cares.

Want to learn French? Do you really need to take a french class - or would it better to just start communicating with some friends that know the language and watching some French movies here and there? Want to learn how to build a website? Sure, you can get a book about HTML, or you can start building a website on Blogger and go from there. Want to be a better writer? Start a blog and get to writing.

I think a lot of us use the need to "learn" something first as an excuse to not actually do anything. So if that's the case, forget about the learning and just start doing it. You'll learn.

Four months ago, I didn't know Ruby on Rails. But now I have two Rails applications to my name. I still wouldn't say I know it, my code is a mess in many parts, and certainly don't consider myself a programmer. But I'm learning - because I started doing it.

So if there's something you want to learn, but you're finding that it's just not happening, maybe it's because you're thinking is out of order.

Decide you want to do something, and then start doing it. The learning will come from that.

Introducing Notifire.me

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 13:57:00 +0000

I'm really happy to announce today that I'm launching a new web application called Notifire. It's an add-on to the web-based group chat software Campfire by 37signals, and it's a great way to add live chat support to any website.

So, what does it do?

The best way to see it in action is to check out the video at http://notifire.me/videos, but it's essentially a way to constantly monitor a Campfire chat room and get an IM or SMS text notification when someone enters the room. The IM includes a link to the room so you can just click on it and immediately begin chatting with the person that entered.

Why this app?

A little while back I started looking for an easy way to add live chat support to my website. There are a lot of solutions out there, but they're all really robust solutions for larger companies that are almost more like call center clients - tracking when people are on and off line, who's available, routing IM's, etc. These are fine, but they're more than I really needed, require yet another chat client, and are usually at least a couple hundred dollars per year.

Campfire makes it really easy to set up a public chat room, but I would sometimes forget to open that room in a browser window. Or, if I had the window open, I would miss the little sound notification that appears. And that's really the "problem" I set out to solve. All I really needed was a slightly better notification for when someone entered a public Campsite room.

Notifire does exactly this, and if I do say so myself, it does it brilliantly.

The technology behind the app

There is one portion of the application that constantly monitors your campfire chat room. When someone enters, it sends an IM or SMS message by leveraging Tropo, an absolutely awesome single API by Voxeo that lets developers integrate Voice, text messaging, and "normal" Instant messages (Gtalk, Yahoo, AIM, MSN, Jabber and even Twitter) into their applications.

Basically, Notifire constantly monitors the room, and when someone enters the room, uses tropo to actually send the message to people that have been set up to receive them.

Behind the UI design

This is the second Ruby on Rails application I've built, and I'm really happy with how it's turned out. (If you follow this blog, you know I've been leading software projects for years, but just recently started learning Rails). I purposely made a very minimalistic user interface on the application, because the idea behind this app is really to make your existing UI's (IM client and Campfire) work just a tad bit better for you.

This isn't to say I didn't spend time on the UI. In fact, I spent a lot of time trying to get the main page of the app where a user sets up a robot (a room monitor) just right. I worked very hard to only show relevant information to the user, while also not requiring them to move in and out of a lot of different pages.

I also borrowed heavily from some concepts that I love on the iPad - that sometimes the best way to tell a user what to do is with words - not graphics. I'm certainly not the only one to notice this - and there's been a bunch of discussion on the web about it. So, I challenged myself to create a UI that used only words and text fields. No graphics allowed. (John Gruber wrote an article about studies that Apple has done on UI design that I wanted to link to but couldn't find. Know where it is?)

Special thanks to Voxeo

I was only able to build this app because of the great team over at Voxeo, the company behind tropo. Voxeo has been a client of mine for years, and I've always really loved working with them. When I told them about my idea and the app I wanted to make they loved it, and played a huge part in helping to make it happen.

The whole thing with tropo is that it helps developers make their applications better. Because Voxeo wants people to use the Tropo platform, they're happy to help developers with their apps. A guy named Mark Silverberg was assigned to my project - and working with him was just awesome.

I know I'm not exactly impartial. I have a relationship with Voxeo that goes back over five years. They were one of my first clients when I started Ideal Project Group and they remain a customer today.

But I wouldn't put it on my blog if I didn't mean it. The gang over there is great, the technology is awesome, and if you're a developer looking to add voice, sms, or IM's to your apps, you should really check tropo out.

It's version 1.0

The hardest part about launching an application is doing so knowing that some bugs are going to pop up. There are a few more tweaks that I'd like to make, and there are some things I know need to be done slightly better. Specifically, I want to add some javascript to one page to make activating a robot a bit smoother that it is now. We've also got to work a bit more on constantly maintaining a stream to Campfire. It's working great, but there are occasions where a connection has been lost and not restored. We're working on perfecting this - but I still felt the app was ready for a release today. In the meantime - trust notifire - but verify it's working every now and then.

I'll be working hard to fix any issues that pop up, so if you check it out and notice anything funky, please send me an email at andrew@idealprojectgroup.com.

A final word

Anyone who has read this blog knows that I'm a huge fan of 37signals. I recommend their products often, I've read their books, and they've inspired me in a lot of ways. I've listend to Jason Fried give talks about business, I've watched videos of Ryan Singer teaching web design, and I've taken to heart advice given to developers by David Heinemeier Hansson.

Because of this, part of me is worried that my application will just look like a cheap knock-off. As if it's just me trying to copy them and failing to do so. I hope instead though that people see an application that was inspired by them, but is still very much me. And, if introducing this product helps tell more people about their products that would make me really happy - because it'd kind of be a way for me to say thanks.

What this project represents to me is that very often the best way to make something new or better, is to simply connect a few things that already exist.

By connecting 37signals, tropo, and popular chat networks, I truly believe that I've introduced one of the best ways to add live chat support to a website.

I hope you like it.

Remembering Cameron

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:32:00 +0000

Two weeks ago marked the one year anniversary of the death of my cousin Cameron, who was killed in a tragic bus accident down by Eastern Illinois University.

My family is very close, and his death has obviously had a huge impact on all of us. At about 11 years my junior though, our age gap was just beginning to close, and so my personal relationship with him wasn't particularly close. Certainly not in the way that his good friends or siblings are close to him.

I've always had a soft spot for, and been close to, his parents though. His father, my mother's brother, was the youngest of my Aunts and Uncles. When we were growing up he was always goofing around, cracking jokes, and basically acting like one of the kids.

A couple years ago, I asked him one thing that he knew now that he wished he knew at my age. His answer: he wished he would have known how fast the years between 30 and 50 go by.

I've been thinking about all of this lately because it represents the paradox of our lives. On the one hand, pretty much whatever we're doing probably doesn't mean all that much. Not when compared to the relationships with those that we're closest to.

Yet, at the same time, whatever we're doing matters a lot. Because it's what we've decided to do with the limited time that we do have. And to waste this, to "muddle through" with anything, is a complete waste.

How many people are still spending two or three hours a day in a car just so they can sit in front of a computer? How many people are settling for "careers" that make them miserable and steal time from their families? How many people aren't taking a chance because they're afraid to fail, when all failing means is that they then get to try something else?

When Cameron was alive, he had the generosity to register as an Organ Donor. As a result, when he died, countless lives were changed. His heart, lungs, liver, kidneys and other organs all went on to save others. And of course, that meant that still others didn't lose someone they might have otherwise.

How would we live our lives if the heart that was beating in our chest was that of someone else's child? What would happen if we lived that way now?

All us are prone to getting stuck at times, to losing some direction, and are tempted to settle for mediocrity. For me, the only way I can honor those that I've lost, is to remember that the time we have is extremely short, to take the lessons of loss seriously, and to remember them constantly.

So remember, whatever you're working on, it doesn't matter. But also, it matters a lot.

If you're not already registered to be an organ donor, you should be. It takes only a minute and you can do it online at http://donatelife.net.

Podcast Episode Seven - What can a project manager learn from an author?

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:00:00 +0000

In this episode of "What can a project manager learn from x?", I interviewed Tracey Bianchi, author of Green Mama - The guilt free guide to saving the planet.

I'm really grateful that Tracey joined me on the podcast.

We had the opportunity to talk about the creative process involved with writing the book, the path she took to get the book published, and some of the main things she learned along the way. You can check out Tracey's website at TraceyBianchi.com and follow her on twitter at @traceybianchi.

As always, you can check out the podcast in itunes or listen directly on the site by using the player below.

(Note: you'll need to give the player below a few moments to load up.)

Thanks again Tracey.

We're all to blame

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 27 May 2010 15:33:00 +0000

We've entered the second month of the oil gusher under the Gulf of Mexico spewing somewhere between 25,000 and 100,ooo barrels of oil per day into the water. And while there's plenty of blame to lay at the feet of BP, I fear we are losing site of the bigger picture of this disaster and what it really means.

Again, while there is plenty to blame on BP, we need to really understand what's going on here. In the same way that a drug addict will do anything to get their next fix, the United States of America is truly addicted to Oil.

Directing your anger at BP for this mess is akin to a cocaine addict getting mad at a straw for blowing out the bridge in their nose.

The hard truth is that we're all to blame. I'm to blame, you're to blame, and just like the drug war has done nothing to stop demand for drugs, punishing BP (while they should be punished) will do nothing to stop future disasters from occurring.

Is BP really more to blame for this mess than government subsidies that have been given to the oil industry, interfering with the free market and artificially driving down the cost of oil?

Is BP more to blame than the people in Nantucket who don't want wind energy farms being built off their cost?

Is BP more to blame than Ronald Reagan, who removed the solar panels from the White House that Jimmy carter installed in 1979?

Is BP more to blame than a nation of people that purchased SUV's that get 12 miles per gallon?

Is BP more to blame than the executive who could institute a work from home policy two days per week for any employee that works in a cubicle, saving huge amounts of energy, but doesn't because they refuse to embrace new technology?

No, they're not.

It feels good to blame BP because it means we don't need to blame ourselves. It means we're not at fault. And it means we don't have to change.

Here are the facts. The United States of America consumes about 20 million barrels of oil per day. The world consumes about 85 million barrels per day, which means about a quarter of that consumption comes from the United States. And it's estimated that the reservoir under the Gulf holds somewhere around 50 million barrels of oil.

This represents about 3 days worth of oil for the USA.

Think about that. We're willing to put an entire ecosystem at risk, drilling a hole 3.5 miles into the core of the earth, and a mile deep in the ocean, for what? For a three day hit on our addiction.

We should punish BP, but that's not going to fix anything. So every time you want to blame someone for this mess, say it's the fault of "BP and me". Because that's exactly who's fault it is.

This disaster must be our nation's rock bottom. We need to enter rehab, and we need to enter it now.

A little consolidation, some new services, and a redesign

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 20 May 2010 21:38:00 +0000

I just launched yesterday a completely new site for Ideal Project Group. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. The old site looked good visually to me - and a lot of people told me that they liked it - but it wasn't working any more.

First off, inquiries were nowhere near what they should have been considering the amount of traffic I get on the site. So from that standpoint, the website was literally not working correctly. The other problem is that the site no longer did a good job of representing what I do and what my company does, so a major update was needed. Lastly, some of the things I've been working on have caused my company's presence on the internet to be completely fragmented. This is okay - because I've been doing a lot of stuff - but it was time to do some clean up and consolidation.

For the new site, I had a few key objectives in mind.

1) I wanted one website to present all the services my company offers. This now includes project management services, website building, product development, and general tech type services. (More on the last two in a bit)

2) I wanted the site to include - not just link to - the products that I've created. This includes the Android application GoFind, and the free web application I released earlier called ThirtyDayProject.org.

3) I wanted to tie this blog into my company site much more tightly and also link to my podcast, twitter feed, and a few other things in a way that made sense.

The Consolidation

Previously I had the main Ideal Project Group site (old), which was all about the project management piece, a Version one for Everyone site that talked about building websites and providing tech services, and then there is still this blog. So, I combined the V1 site and the main IPG site, and also pull in this blog's 10 most recent posts via Feedburner. I may end up integrating this blog even more tightly at some point, but I still need to make a few other decisions with Duarlander and personal blogging before doing so. For now though, I was able to style the feed and it looks really nice inside the new site.

Showing off my products

The GoFind page still exists for now - though this is likely the next thing to be changed - and ThirtyDayProject.org is a stand alone web app. So, I created a product page where I give a quick blurb about what each of them are, and link to their respective sites where people can get more detail if they want. This is much better than simply providing a link.

Some new services

In the past, small businesses would call from time to time asking me if I could create a certain piece of software. I would explain that I focused exclusively on Project Management and could lead a team of theirs but that I didn't have developers of my own.

I'm no longer going to turn down this kind of business, and am in fact going to be eagerly seeking it out.

I pulled together a team to create an Android app that was built and launched in six weeks. I built and launched my first Rails app with help from a bunch of people in under two months. I have great relationships with a number of developers and there is simply no reason that I should shy away from providing custom development for small businesses.

I've always lead software projects, and that's what I'll still be doing. The only difference is that sometimes I'll be working with a client's developers, and sometimes I'll be working with developers that I pull together. More flexibility, more freedom, more speed, and more business. All good things.

Very lastly, I'll also be working to help get small businesses set up with all their little tech needs. Maybe a shopping cart solution, maybe just getting a website and email up, or maybe helping a brick and mortar business get online with a podcast. This won't be how I make most of my money (I don't think) but I've worked with a couple brand new businesses lately to get them set up online and it's really fun working with these people.

You know who wants to get stuff done and move quickly? Someone that just started a new business.

So that's the story behind the new site. All my services in one place, a page to highlight things I've made, and tighter integration with things like this blog and the podcast.

Check it out at www.idealprojectgroup.com and let me know what you think. I'd love some feedback.

The high dive

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 11 May 2010 20:46:00 +0000

You may or may not know this about me, but I was a springboard diver for about 10 years - from about the age of 12 until I graduated from the University of Iowa. I've been thinking lately about the sport and some of the lessons it taught me, most likely because my parents recently moved out of their house of 25 years and have steadily been giving me pictures and other things I left in the house.

In particular though, I've been thinking about how when we push ourselves to another level, it almost immediately makes us better at what we're currently doing. Obvious right? Maybe.

In the sport of diving, there are three levels of competition: the one meter springboard, the three meter springboard, and then the ten meter platform. I was almost exclusively a springboard diver, with an occasional exercise happening on the platform. One thing I recall very clearly is how much easier the one meter seemed once I started practicing on the three meter. Maybe easier isn't exactly the right word, but less scary for sure.

Smashing face first into the water or waxing out on your back isn't a joy on the one meter, but once you encounter that on the three meter it's really no big deal. Most importantly though you begin to overcome a lot of your fear, which in turn gives you a lot of confidence. And once you have less fear and more confidence, good things are bound to happen.

The problem I think we run into sometimes is that we mistakenly believe we shouldn't go to the next level - whatever that level may be - until we master what we're currently doing. Thinking things such as "I'm not going to write that novel until I've perfected my short stories", or "I'm not going to talk in front of 100 people until I've mastered speaking in front of ten", or "I'm not going to start my own business until I have another year of experience."

Here's the secret: you don't master any level until you push yourself at the next level.

Any great artist, great athlete, great thinker, or great worker is great at what they do now, because they found a way to push themselves at whatever their next level was.

DJ Phillips may not love every song he's writing in a 30 day period, and Cheryl Sterling may not like every self portrait she took for 30 days, but I guarantee that a year from now when they go to create something, it'll feel easier.

So whatever it is that you're working on, if you want to become better at it, look for the next level. It's okay if you don't master it. Just by practicing in that next space, you'll become much better at what you're already working on.

Go on, jump off the high dive!

Seth Godin is coming to Chicago

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 04 May 2010 17:52:00 +0000

If you read this blog regularly, you know how much I think of Seth Godin. Well, he's coming to Chicago on September 16th. All the details are here: http://squidoo.com/sethroadtrip.

I went to a similar event in New York last year and wrote about it here. Not much else to say. You should go.

Finding comfort in contradiction

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 03 May 2010 02:07:00 +0000

When you run a small business, it's easy to get caught up in other people's opinions. There are countless blogs, videos, books, podcasts and other things that entrepreneurs publish about what's worked for them, what ideas they think are good, and what they think is terrible.

But you don't need to look very far before you can find two people you respect that disagree with one another and have conflicting points of view. Seth Godin writes about the importance of failing often while Jason Fried says learning from failure is over rated.

Some people argue that you should focus on learning a skill while others believe that in an age of Mechanical Turk and off shore development that you should have others build your ideas.

My favorite contradiction is where 37signals contradicts themselves regarding what you should think about your competition. Here's what they wrote in Getting Real in 2006:

Keep Up With the Joneses
Subscribe to news feeds about your competitors.
Subscribe to news feeds about both your product and your competitors (it's always wise to know the ways of one's enemy). Use services like PubSub, Technorati, Feedster, and others to stay up to date (for keywords, use company names and product names). With RSS, this constantly changing info will be delivered right to you so you're always up to speed.

Now here's how they open an essay on competition in their latest book REWORK, which was just published in March:

Who cares what they're doing?
"In the end, it's not worth paying much attention to the competition anyway. Why not? Because worrying about your competition quickly turns into an obsession. What are they doing right now? Where are they going next? How should we react?"

And then later...

Focus on yourself instead. What's going on in here is way more important than what's going on out there. When you spend time worrying about someone else, you can't spend that time improving yourself.

They both sound like good pieces of advice to me.

Both of these books are fantastic by the way, and even if you don't work in technology you should get REWORK, because it will inspire you.

It doesn't bother me in the least bit that there's contradictory advice here, and that's the point. It's comforting. Because the truth is that pretty much anyone writing anything is doing so based on their unique perspective at that moment in time.

Things change us, and they change our perspectives, and we learn and we grow. Sometimes we change our mind. And sometimes both things can be true.

Read what other people have to say, let them inspire you, take the good advice. But remember, it might be wrong and it might change.

Or, it's coming from an expert and you should really pay attention to what they're saying.

Introducing ThirtyDayProject.org

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:13:00 +0000

The first thing I'll say is that if I've done my work correctly, most of what I'm about to write here is more clearly and accurately described by visiting www.thirtydayproject.org.

With that out of the way, on February 19th, in response to this post by Andrew Dubber, I committed to making an idea real by May 1st. All I knew at the time was that a man I had never met was going to publish one idea a day on his blog for thirty days starting on March 3rd.

As someone that works on a lot of projects, I pride myself on being able to get things done. I didn't know what the ideas would be, or what I would have to do to make one real, but I figured that there would be at least one that I could run with.

I'm very happy to announce today the launch of ThirtyDayProject.org, an implementation of Andrew Dubber's 5th idea in his series of 30 ideas in 30 days, the numberless calendar.

I really loved this idea because of the simple, but powerful idea that doing something every day for 30 days seems achievable at the outset, yet still requires enough of a commitment that it can have a lasting impact.

In order to implement the idea, I learned enough Ruby/Ruby on Rails and CSS so that I could build and design the application, and enough git so that I could share my code and so that I could deploy the application.

By no means am I an expert programmer. But I sure know a hell of a lot more than I did two months ago.

The end result is this: a simple web application where people can start their own thirty day projects and view the projects of others. I took Andrew's idea and added to it the inspiration from Seth Godin that I talked about in this post - that shipping things and sharing your work, your art, is vital.

So the site I built allows people to start a project, mark each day off as "done", and if they choose to do so, they can ship whatever it was they did that day. "Shipping" something is as simple as giving a day a title, and providing a link to whatever you did.

When someone provides a link to their work, I chose not to keep a viewer of that work inside the site I built, but instead just take them directly to whatever link was provided. The reason for this is simple. There was no point in me trying to make a website that stores photos better than flickr, or videos better than Vimeo, or music better than Bandcamp. Plus, there are too many sites in the world that are trying to confiscate people's creativity. I wanted to project it.

So the site I built is about the idea of what can be done in thirty days. If you want to take photos for 30 days, you should get a flickr account. If you want to write something every day, you should have a blog. And if you don't have one you should make one. I didn't want to fight that reality, I wanted to preach it.

I tried as best I could to tell the story of how this project got started, infuse some inspiration that I've received along the way, and encourage people to make something and share it with other people.

My hope is that people will be creative with the site. Maybe some people will ship something every day, while others may build a reputation for only shipping one thing at the end of thirty days. Most of all, I hope people use the site because I truly want to follow people that decide to do something every day for thirty days.

I want to see what they share. I want to see what they make. And my hope is that this website, and the story that it is a part of, will continue to inspire people in the same way that it inspired me.

I'm not trying to sound dramatic, but deciding to work on this project, and being a part of this little dance, has been really wonderful for me. I'm able to do things now that I couldn't just a couple months ago. And so my real desire is that maybe, someone will end up doing something positive that they wouldn't otherwise have done because of something I made.

That would truly make me feel pretty good, so I hope you check out www.thirtydayproject.org and think about whether there's a project you've been wanting to work on.

I'm really happy with the site, but I know it's not perfect. So let me know what you think I did well, and tell me what I need to change. I would sincerely love to hear your feedback.

Airplane mode

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 03:16:00 +0000

I was at the Shedd Aquarium with my family over the weekend, and I realized that I've been occasionally doing something with my phone that some others might find useful. Or, maybe you do this already.

If you're anything like me, you have some sort of smart phone that gets your email, twitter feed, RSS reader, and a few other things that command your attention. I've even caught myself taking out my phone to take a picture of my kids, seen that I had an email, and then started to read the email!

How terrible is that? A few times lately I've just put my phone into Airplane mode.

I figure, when I get on an airplane I'm not worried that I'm out of touch for a few hours. So why not do the same thing if I want to hang out with my kids? I'm all for being connected, but if it starts disconnecting us from the people closest to us then that's not a very winning proposition.

I was just talking to another small business owner tonight and I think doing the same thing can help us with anything we know is important. If you need to be working on a design or recording a podcast, forget about just turning off email - why not unhook from the internet completely for three hours?

Next time you're feeling like you should be focused on something, maybe the best thing you can do is pretend you're getting on a plane and go into airplane mode.

Why companies shouldn't pay contractors hourly

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:35:00 +0000

It's not that hourly pay is bad, I used to charge hourly too. It was the way I knew and it was how I thought things worked. Now though I believe there is a better way for companies that hire contractors and other businesses that provide services. And once you know of a better way, then that's the path you should try to go on right?

So why is a flat monthly fee for services better for a company that's bringing on some type of contract worker? Quite simply, because you're then paying for the service you needed and not the number of hours it took someone to provide that service.

These are two entirely different things.

In my line of work, sometimes the absolute best thing I can do for a project is sit down with a VP or the CEO and have a difficult discussion to set a project on the right path again. It may take all of 30 minutes, but it may be where a ton of my value came in for a given week.

Compare this with a PM who simply isn't willing to have a difficult discussion. They'll keep "working" on a project, checking their email, writing up documents, and having hallway discussions that are doing absolutely nothing to fix whatever is broken with a project. Yet, they continue to rack up their hours and the customer pays for it.

What if you're paying someone 40 hours per week for work that someone else could do in 20? Maybe you turned that more efficient person down because their hourly rate was 25% higher. Wait - that doesn't make a lot of sense does it?

The other thing that's nice about paying service providers a flat monthly fee is that it allows you to, if the need arises, negotiate a price based on the service you're going to get - not on an hourly rate.

If you pay contractors for some of your projects, instead of asking yourself "what hourly rate am I willing to pay?" try asking "How much am I willing to pay for this service each month?" $10,000? $5,000? $2,000? $500?

Then, try to get someone to provide that service each month for that dollar amount. There's a good chance you'll find that you can get better service and pay less for it by caring more about the results and less about the hours.

* = Not really

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 00:52:00 +0000

We've all seen the ads, articles and commercials. Something like "Get one month free!*"

Of course, the month isn't free and before we even read whatever foot note we're supposed to read we know that the little star means "actually - not really".

So why do so many companies use this tactic? Does it really work?

If you're writing an ad, or a promotion, or describing something on your website and you find yourself putting a * in the text somewhere I think that's big trouble.

Instead, why not just say "Get one free month when you pay for two months" or "Get $5 off the book as long as you're a member of our book club."

Whatever the purpose or the promotion, it shouldn't be necessary to put that little star in there so much. And, you'll likely find that you're writing is better and the description of your promotion is clearer, more concise, and may even be more effective.

Next time you're inclined to put a * somewhere, just remember it means "not really" and try to describe what it is that you actually want to promote.

First impressions or lasting impressions?

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 03:44:00 +0000

I'm not sure we can worry so much about our first impressions if we want to have lasting impressions. Making a good first impression is great, I just don't think it should be a primary concern on places like a blog.

The problem is that when you write to make a good first impression, you do so at the expense of not creating stronger connections with the people who are already visiting you.

It's a little bit of a challenge to think this way because it's true that on any given day someone new could visit your blog, and whatever article you happened to write is going be their first impression of you. And usually we want to make good first impressions.

I don't think we can have it both ways though.

The alternative is to write in a way where you simply accept that some new visitors will not stick around because you didn't make a great first impression. That's fine. Because what you're doing instead is appreciating the people that have already decided to give you their attention, and strengthening a bond that already exists.

This creates a lasting impression, and when you make a lasting impression with someone they're far more likely to stick with you and be a fan. You may not get as many page views, and you many not have a bunch of mentions on twitter, but I think ultimately it's a much better strategy because the visitors that you do have are likely going to be more passionate about your service or your product.

The opportunity is that most people don't do this.

It's a lot more difficult to measure passion and loyalty than it is to measure page views, clicks, and unique visitors. And since it's easier to measure that's what more people do. They can see the impact some article had, it looks like they're being effective because more people came to their site, and it makes them feel good because there's more immediately tangible evidence of what "worked".

But just because something is easier to measure doesn't mean it's more important. In fact, it's probably the opposite; the harder something is to measure the more valuable it probably is. (I read an article arguing the same thing that I wanted to reference and I can't find it. I'll keep looking.)

I do concern myself with first impressions on my main company website, because part of the reason it exists is to get people to want to learn more about me and my company. My blog however is where I want to make lasting impressions.

Not surprisingly then, I find my blog to be a much bigger asset.

Thirty ideas down, thirty days to go.

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 02:16:00 +0000

Andrew Dubber came out with the last idea in his 30 day series of ideas today, all of which he's given away on his blog for anyone to do with what they want. Fittingly, today's idea was a website where people could give their ideas away for anyone to use. It's another one of my favorites.

What's great about Andrew's ideas isn't just that he did what he said he was going to do, but the way that he wrote about them. He made a real commitment to writing thought out posts about his ideas each and every day. Hopefully you've been keeping up, but if not, you should really check all of them out.

And now, because he executed on his project, there's all this other stuff going on that I wanted to share. As you may know, I am executing on his 5th idea, the 30 day numberless calendar. It's going to be a website where people can put their calendars, and if they want, also share what they're doing.

Originally, there were twelve people that joined my project space when I opened it. The only commit people had to make was that they'd write one blog post a week about it. Other than that, they could do as much or as little as they wanted with the project. Exactly half have opted to say in, and half have opted to bow out.

To understand why I asked for that commitment, you need look no further than Joan Lee's blog post titled Diligence. Joan is one of the people that decided to stay in the project.

There are no hard feelings at all by the way with people that chose not to keep going. We all have things we need to do, priorities change, and sometimes we just lose interest. It happens.

But, I knew it was going to be important for me to know who really was in to the project and who wasn't.

Deb Walsh started a facebook page for the project for anyone that wants to join, and has put up a new website at OneBeforeMidnight.com (it's still being built) where she's publishing sound tracks with her on the piano for a 30 day project. If the first one is any indication of what's to come, we're in for a treat.

Cheryl Sterling has been writing about a 30 day project of portraits, and in our project space she mentioned she has paints ready to go. The anticipation is killing me.

Simon Fowler came up with the great little visual to explain the whole first follower thing, and has been thinking about what he's going to do. It sounds like he's decided though that any project is going to make him better at something he's doing already.

Aaron Brown has decided to do 30 days of gardening. He blogs at Moot Pt. where you can also check out some of his music.

And DJ Phillips, another musician, one of the funnier people I've met lately, is going to be doing something with his music.

I'm really happy that I'm working on this project, and having these people along side working on their own projects is really awesome. So thanks to Derek and Andrew for getting this thing started, and you should have some cool stuff to look at come May first.

We're always the hardest on ourselves

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:11:00 +0000

One of the many things I like about writing regularly on my blog is the feedback that I'll at times get from some people. It can really help me see how other people are interpreting what I'm writing and how I can communicate better.

Last week I wrote about my new pricing model and some of the challenges that come with it, and a few people sent me some emails and IM's. A couple folks just asked what happened, others told me they thought it was great that I was sticking to my new approach and trying to be innovative, and still others told me that basically they thought I was nuts and making a mistake.

The feedback has had me thinking a lot about how we can be really hard on ourselves, and maybe sometimes unnecessarily so.

When I first started my business I had a two month project that started and ended in about the expected timeframe. When it was over I started another, and that continued for a while. Then I worked on another, and so on.

In the three and a half years since starting Ideal Project Group I've formed great relationships with a number of companies, built a mobile application, created a new service to build websites for small businesses, started a community to test applications for the Android operating system, and began producing a monthly podcast.

My point is, my company is probably in better shape than it ever was the first year or two I was in business. And after all, part of the goal of my new approach is to get paid a smaller amount of money by a larger number of clients. So then why do I feel compelled to write something like "hanging by a thread" when I'm encountering a challenge that in many ways I expected to face at some point?

I think it's because we're always the hardest on ourselves. At least this can be true for me, and it hits me in two ways. First, I tend not to look at where my business is and where it came from, but where it is and where I'd like it to be. These are two entirely different perspectives of course and certainly impact my view of things.

Couple this with the fact that if all I'm doing is talking about the positive things happening with my business, but none of the challenges, I feel like I'm lying by omission. That would only be sharing one part of the story, and I think it would be a disservice to anyone reading this blog. So I'm regularly asking myself whether I'm sharing enough - am I being as open as I should be? Of course that's usually followed by the question - Am I being too open?

What I've realized though is that I'm probably just being hard on myself. I could just have easily changed the title of my post to "Laying the new foundation" and that would have changed the tone entirely. And maybe that would have been a better way to talk about it. I don't really know, but I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

The other thing that's become clear though is that I do need to do a much better job of explaining why I have moved to my new pricing model, and why I think it's better for everyone. I haven't done that quite as well as I should so I'll be making a point of talking a bit more about how it benefits my customers as well as my overall business strategy, and give more reasons as to why I think it's where the future lies for service companies.

In the meantime, I'll try not to be too hard on myself for not having done so already.

Podcast Episode Six - What can a project manager learn from programming?

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:09:00 +0000

In my latest podcast I opted not to interview anyone, but instead talk about what I've learned so far from trying to learn Ruby on Rails. I talk a bit about feeling like I'm learning how to use a computer all over again, feeling somewhat more empowered, and how different people have been willing to help me with the project. As always you can listen right on the blog, or you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

I hope you enjoy the episode.

Hanging by a thread

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:54:00 +0000

A lot of people in my family have started their own businesses. My mother's father started a magazine company. My father's father started a printing company. My father started a consulting and training business. And I have a few aunts and uncles that have started other various small businesses.

Pretty much everyone I know who has started their own company has stories about the various ups and downs that inevitably come with launching something on your own. And when they talk about the challenges, looking back on them, they almost talk about overcoming these with a greater sense of pride than any specific accomplishment or success they may have had.

I'm bringing this up because I find myself and my business in a bit of a weird place lately, and I got a bit of unwelcome news this week. A project that I've been working on has been de-prioritized, and with it, my level of involvement will also decrease. I'm still working with this client on some projects, but just to a lesser extent.

In a weird way, this is actually a bit of a success. At the beginning of the year, I wrote about how I was no longer going to charge hourly for my services. Instead, I have different tiers of engagement on a project. I wanted companies to be able to use my services as easily as I'm able to use Software as a Service tools. So,

So now, when I'm on a project, it's at a tier of either:

"Monitoring and Maintaining" where I provide a little help to good teams that just need assistance keeping things coordinated
"Lead and Manage" where I run a project, lead sprints, and all the normal things you'd expect, or
"Repair and Relaunch" - where a project that's all messed up needs a massive overhaul.

So just like I may sometimes downgrade a Software account for a few months, and then upgrade during others, my clients can now do the same. I think this model is the future of not just project management, but all types of services.

I'm really grateful that this client came on board with me with this new approach, and the fact that they could easily change my level of involvement with their company for a little while, in many ways, validates my idea.

And, I have no doubt there will be a time in the future that they want to bring my company back up a tier when they have another important project they need help with. Everyone who owns a small business should be as lucky as I've been to have a client like this one.

The challenge is, in the grand scheme of things, I'm still just getting started with this approach. One client I had wanted to keep me on a project I was working on for another month or two after a contract ended, but was unwilling to go with this new approach. I've also had a number of people call me about opportunities where the discussions ended almost immediately just because they couldn't, or wouldn't, wrap their heads around the fact that I wasn't charging hourly. I'm fine with this, because I truly believe it's the right thing to do, and the right way to set the proper course for my company.

Now, there's a valid argument that could be made that would basically say something like "just go after business that pays hourly, what's the big deal?" It's true after all, if you don't survive this month, who cares what your course might be in a year. I've struggled with this because the logic is sound. The problem is that all it does is perpetuate the status quo with my business. It does absolutely nothing to advance my company, or position me for the future.

There's a business quote I read once that went something like "You need to determine how you're willing to fail, not how you want to succeed." The point wasn't that you should want to fail, or even take lessons from failure, but that you should ask yourself this question to act as a barometer for whether you believe in what you're doing. I think there are a lot of "successful" people who are less proud of the paths they took than they might otherwise be.

Where I'm at right now is that I'd rather fail at this approach than succeed by taking another hourly paid gig. I don't believe in that model, I think the incentives are misaligned with the customer's, and I think it puts the value of a service in the entirely wrong place.

Most people are unwilling to absorb a little pain and discomfort in the present in order to be better positioned for the future. It's why trillions of dollars have been given to banks, why the US government now owns car companies, and why we are still entirely dependent on foreign oil, and protecting our access to it with the largest military the world has ever seen.

I will not go down that path with my business.

I'll wrap up shop and work for someone else's company that I believe in before I go down a path I think is wrong just to keep my business alive for another year.

I hope this post didn't come off like a complete downer, because I don't mean for it to. It's just that I've been pretty open with my beliefs, how things are going with my business, and my general opinions on things. I just didn't think it would have been right to omit the fact that, financially speaking, my business is going to sort of hanging by a thread for a bit.

The irony is that with some of the side projects I've been working on, and my new endeavor to learn Ruby on Rails, I'm more excited about the future than I have been in a long time.

So, if any of you out there are looking for someone to help you get your important stuff done, I hope you'll consider shooting me an email. Just like software companies, I even offer a 3o day trial period. If you're not happy with what you see after a month, you don't have to pay me a nickel. That's what I mean when I say I want my service to be like software: Flat fees, no long term contracts, and 30 day trial periods. Can you see why I think this is the future of service companies?

Who knows, you may be the topic of conversation a decade or so from now when I'm talking with pride about some of the challenges my little business had to overcome.

Self Censorship

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 04:05:00 +0000

As I'm sure you're aware, there has been a lot of discussion about Google's decision to stop censoring search results in China. I'm not really going to opine much on the decision, but will basically leave it at this: With all the financial madness going on, two wars still happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who knows what else is being dealt with that we don't know about, it's fair to say I believe there is a larger context that we should be aware of when having the discussion.

This has had be thinking about the ways in which we censor ourselves.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about how awesome I thought Google translate was, and played around with it a little bit since then. I realized that in order to really get results in a different language I had to take a few steps. I first searched for 'Financial Corruption' and translated it into Chinese. I put that into Google, and a bunch of US sites came up. I realized, I probably had to go turn some setting on. Indeed, you go to Settings -> Search Settings and the default is English. Once I selected Chinese and searched again I was on my way.

Even if you go to Google.cn, and input english, you are of course more likely to get an American site - but certainly an English speaking one. Google "Financial Corruption" in English on Google.cn, and you get pretty much the same search results as if you search for it on Google.com in English. But, if you go to Google.cn (or Google.com with your language setting properly turned on) and search for 金融腐败, the Chinese translation for "Financial Corruption", and then take that url string and put it into Google Translate, you get an entirely different set of results. There are more efficient ways, but I wanted to link everything assuming that most readers had english turned on as their only language.

My point here is that while, yes, it is very bad that the Chinese government censors the internet, it would do us well to, for a moment, take a look in the mirror.

I don't regularly search for news about the Greek soverign debt crisis in any European languages, though surely there's a valuable and worthwhile perspective written by someone who speaks a language other than English. Nor have I read the take that the French or the Germans have on the new healthcare legislation that was just passed.

As powerful and far reaching as the internet is, almost all of us are looking at just one tiny slice of it. It's great that we're talking about the internet, and freedom, and censorship, and the impact that it's having, and will continue to have, on governments. These are important conversations.

What we should also be talking about though, is how we're censoring ourselves.

Casual Friday is a form of mind control

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:54:00 +0000

I have a few friends who work for companies that have a "casual Friday" policy. The idea here is that on Fridays, employees can where whatever they want to work - ie, something casual.

Ooooh, hooray! I'm a 33 year old man raising two kids, paying a mortgage, managing a significant budget for your company, and I'm so excited because today I get to where whatever pants I want! You're so awesome boss!

Are you kidding me?

If once a week your employer is saying "hey, you can wear whatever you want to work" - all they're doing is telling you that they have so much power over you that they get to control what you're going to wear on a daily basis.

It's a ridiculous form of mind control.

Stodgy companies of course respond by saying something to the effect of: "but we often have clients visiting" or "there are important meetings to attend with key executives" or some other lame excuse for a ridiculous policy.

The reality is that if your people can't figure out the appropriate attire to wear for a particular event, then you've hired the wrong people. The other reality of course is that people work most effectively when they are comfortable. And clothes have a direct impact on our comfort.

Just talk to a woman who has to wear panty hose every day, or a man that has to wear an upside down noose - I mean tie - every day.

If you want people to wear pleated khaki pants with a checkered button down just because that's what you wear, at least have the wherewithal to realize that what you're doing is telling people they have to wear a uniform.

And if you expect people to wear a uniform, don't be surprised if they're unwilling to take a risk, make a mistake, or do something amazing. Because you've trained them to be so obedient that they can't even pick out their own clothes.

Casual Friday's are nothing more than an exercise in mind control. On Monday, be an adult and wear whatever pants you want.

Twitter is for listening

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:53:00 +0000

I'm pretty sure most people that use Twitter for their business in some capacity are using it the wrong way. I say this because it seems most people view Twitter as a way to tell the world about something that they know about - or something they're making, or doing, or selling, or whatever.

And to be sure, this is certainly one benefit of twitter. I make it a point to tweet a blog post I've written, mention something interesting I see, and post the occasional picture of my kids. But the ability to say something on twitter isn't why it's valuable.

Listening is where the real value is at with Twitter.

I had never even heard of Derek Sivers until Jason Fried mentioned his writing. I learned about a whole new way I could make websites by learning to use Perch, something that Ryan Singer tweeted about. I only knew that Andrew Dubber was going to be putting up an idea a day, every day for thirty days, because Derek Sivers linked to it. And because I learned of Andrew Dubber, I now know there is a double distilled whisky-type alcohol called Manx that you can get from the Isle of Man. (There's lots of other great stuff I've learned by hearing of Andrew Dubber too.)

Truly though, the times Twitter has been the most valuable are the moments when I've learned something from someone I respect, or when something I mentioned got noticed - but only as a direct response to something that I heard.

This is why I got so confused when I would see people that were following 3,000 or 4,000 people. How can you keep up with anything that anyone is saying?

These people of course are following others in the hopes that they'll be followed back. Their plan is to basically follow a bunch of people, hope they get followed back, not listen to well over 90% of these people, and lastly, hope that a good percentage of the people that they're ignoring will pay attention to them.

Good luck with that.

I was talking about this with a friend when I was informed that TweetDeck allows users to determine which of the people they follow that they're actually going to listen to. So now, whenever I see someone that's following thousands of people and also uses TweetDeck, I just figure that's exactly what they're doing. And I don't even notice how many followers they have, because all I see is the thousands of people they're ignoring.

Tell me, if you're asking people to pay attention to you, knowing full well that you're going to be ignoring them, why should I give you my attention? Haven't you just built a wall between us before I've even had a chance to listen to what you have to say? Aren't you just telling me that you're probably going to ignore me? How big of a fan of yours can I become if this is my perception?

I use my blog for speaking, but Twitter is for listening.

"I can't do it"

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:47:00 +0000

Really?

You can't?

Are you sure can't is the word you should be using?

I've been thinking about how often people say can't the past couple weeks. It's also discussed in REWORK, which I just finished on Thursday, in the essay titled "four letter words", and then today Seth Godin's post Yes we Can had me thinking about it again.

You'll hear people use the word can't about their work, themselves, and their lives all the time. It's too bad, because understanding that we're almost always making choices, allows you to gain a lot of control over you life while also being a lot happier about the choices you've made. Just as importantly, it helps to keep a clear perspective by recognizing when you truly can't do something.

Any time I'm about to say I can't, I try to find what choice it is that I'm really making. And not necessarily because I think this will allow me to make a better decision, though it sometimes does, but because I just feel trapped if I say I can't do something.

Now, I'm not perfect at this, and the "can'ts" still slip through now and then, but I strive not to say it. Because if I can't do something, then I'm not really free, and that is terrible.

Almost always, the word can't can be replaced with "I choose not to _____ because _____"

You can't fly? Or you choose not to go extreme skydiving because you are afraid it might kill you?

You can't sing? Or you choose not to go to open mic night because you might be embarrassed or people might laugh at you?

You can't speak another language? Or you've chosen not to spend your time learning French?

Some people must feel more comfortable by saying can't - otherwise I suppose we wouldn't hear it said so often. If you can't do something, then you're not responsible are you? If you can't do something, then you don't have to embrace what you can do, which is really just the choice you made. Instead, you can just get mad and blame your situation - but not yourself.

That mindset is just a frustrating trap so I try to avoid it at all costs.

When you recognize the choices you've made, then you can really embrace them and give them your all. This also makes it so you're not bummed out about what you "can't" do.

You can't take a year off of work? Or you want a nice home to live in with a steady job? It's fine if you want that steady job! Just stop saying you can't do something else because that means you're not taking responsibility for, and embracing, the choices you've made.

The other benefit of looking at things this way is that you recognize how important it is to maintain a proper perspective on things.

I can't stop the affect the internet will continue to have on the world (nor would I want to) so I choose to do things differently than I did before. I can't stop my children from growing up, so I choose to embrace the - literal - writing on the wall while they're toddlers. I can't bring back loved ones that I've lost, so I truly embrace the time I do have with my friends and family.

What can't you do?

Are you sure about that?

With this in mind, I wanted to give you an update on the first follower dance party project. If you've been following it - which is best summarized in this fantastic drawing by Simon Fowler, one of people participating in the project - I've decided that I'm going to use it to try my hand at programming.

What? A project manager that wants to try to learn some programming. Yep. As I told the rest of the group in the project space, I feel lately as if my ideas have been imprisoned by my inability to actually make them real on my own. I'm using this project as an excuse to try something I've been putting off for too long.

It would be really easy for me to say I can't develop the website I'm thinking of. Or I can't afford to hire a few people to do this. Or I can't find the time.

Instead.

I don't want to spend the money on hiring a developer, I'd rather try to do it myself. I don't know Ruby on Rails, so I'm going to get tutoring from Jeff Cohen of Purple Workshops so that I can learn it as quickly as possible. This project is a priority, so I'm going to put the necessary time and effort into it.

Can I really develop a web application that's my twist on this idea from Andrew Dubber? We'll find out.

It ships on May 1st.

The brain and the heart are equally vital

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:35:00 +0000

There seems to be an ongoing debate in the world of the web and technology around what's more important - design, functionality, usability, etc.

I find this debate odd.

Just last week Ryan Singer of 37signals wrote a post about how different the experience is between visiting an Apple store and a Sprint store. His main point, which I agree with entirely, was essentially that the experience in an Apple store is awesome and at a Sprint store it's pretty terrible.

Here's the thing though - he was there because AT&T's coverage has major issues. He wrote:

AT&T has been bad enough lately that, while I’m not ready to chuck the iPhone, I’m at least growing curious.

No matter how great the user experience is in the store, if the product isn't actually working that poses a pretty significant problem.

You never hear doctors arguing about whether the brain is more important than the heart. Or whether the lungs are more important than the Kidneys. Sure, I suppose in a major accident and something's got to go they know they can't take away the brain. I'm not trying to get in a philosophical debate here.

My point is, everyone agrees that these are all vital organs. They're all critically important, and they all matter a lot. I don't often hear doctors debating about whether it's more important to get oxygen to the blood or whether it's more important to pump the blood. That would be a sort of ridiculous argument.

This is how I feel about web applications. The 37signals products are simple and elegant, but if my data was lost or there was a major security breach, the easy to use UI would cease to matter very quickly. And likewise, without the design they just wouldn't be the products they are today.

Design and functionality are equally vital.

By the way, this is something I'll be keeping in mind as I execute on this idea, from Andrew Dubber. I'll be giving it a little twist, so it's going to be more than just a printout of a numberless calendar. Stay tuned.

The language barrier is crumbling

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:59:00 +0000

Google translation has been around for a little while, but I just used it in any sort of extensive fashion recently with this first follower dance party project that's going on. One of the people that joined this still as of now unknown project is a man named Lykle de Vries.

Lykle is involved with some really cool projects such as New Music Labs, which helps musicians maintain and cultivate their fan base. Basically, he helps ensure that his client's art is received. Lykle also has another business that focuses on new business development for a variety of clients.

Here's what's fascinating me right now though; the new music labs site I linked to above is all in Dutch - because Lykle lives in The Netherlands. With the power of Google Translate though, all I had to do was enter the url of his site and I'm taken to it and everything appears in English.

The language barrier is literally crumbling.

Now, for some people, this may not be news. They've seen translate before, and it's not new to them. That's fine, but I've been thinking about this reality the last couple days and I think we're going to witness another one of those monumental shifts - or maybe accelerations - in the kind of content we consume.

It's amazing to me that now, we'll be able to get any web page delivered in pretty much any language we want. And, Google chrome just added translate right into the browser - at least for windows. So if you visit a site in another language, it just asks you if you want to view it in your language.

I'm amazed by this kind of stuff.

So now here's what I'm wondering; how long until we begin copywriting pages towards Google translate? Some things translate better than others, and I wonder if this is the next evolution of copywriting. We'll now not only be trying to capture an audience that speaks in our natural language, but we'll also writing with the Google Translate engine in mind.

How long until this technology is incorporated into Instant Messaging, text messaging, and other forms of communication?

I'm certainly not arguing that this should replace learning another language - but I am suggesting that this will yet again dramatically increase the amount of information we're able to consume, and the audiences we're able to reach online. As a result, it will change the way we create websites and how we write on these websites.

I hope I never get to a point where I'm not completely amazed by the awesomeness of this stuff, and it's more proof that this whole internet thing is just only getting started.

By the way, I've added a little widget in my sidebar so that any visitor to my site can view it in any number of languages.

Hello world indeed.

Determination

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:45:00 +0000

© Copyright Cheryl Sterling. All rights reserved.

When I announced that I was going to execute on one of Andrew Dubber's ideas, and subsequently opened up the project space to anyone that would commit to writing one blog post a week about it, I really had no idea what was going to happen.

What's happened is that I'm now working with people I've never met, from multiple countries, and who all bring amazing talents and unique perspectives to this still as of yet unknown project. By joining, they've influenced what kind of idea I'm likely to execute on and have already helped to keep the momentum going.

Cheryl Sterling is one of the people that joined the project, and in addition to making spectacular hand made quilts, she also takes some pretty incredible self portraits. When I was checking out her blog, the photo you see at the top of the post just jumped out at me. I think it's really striking, and complex, and even a little scary.

But one word kept coming to mind when I saw it. Determination.

I asked Cheryl if she'd allow me to post it on my blog as a sort of kick-off to the project, because I'm determined to make good on my promise, and actually ship one of Andrew Dubber's ideas. There was something about it that set the right tone for the start of the project. It's like a visual that's saying: "I'm serious. We're going to do this thing."

The other reason I thought this photo was so great though was because the longer I looked at it, the more gentle it seemed. It's like someone that has their game face on.

So don't be scared, we're just a group people determined to do something fun and have a unique experience. Today's the last chance to get access to my project space. If you've been on the fence, I hope you'll join.

The difference between teaching and coaching

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:04:00 +0000

I've been thinking lately about the difference between teaching and coaching, and how by understanding the difference between the two, we can learn more from those who are doing both. Likewise, understanding this difference can also help us properly focus our energy when we are ourselves showing someone how to do something.

Both teaching and coaching are of course helping someone learn a particular skill or sharing a certain piece of knowledge, and both of them are gifts that are given to a student. Teaching however, is primarily a one way interaction. A person that knows something shows you how to do something or tells you some piece of information that they know.

If I write a blog post on how to use Google Apps to set up your company email accounts, I'm teaching you. The only interaction required is that I send this information to you, and you receive it. There, I've taught you something.

Coaching on the other had requires a cyclical, ongoing interaction. In order to coach someone, you need to first teach them something, then observe the student, and then provide feedback again. Unless all three of these interactions are taking place, it cannot be considered coaching.

The biggest difference is that, ultimately, teaching is about the teacher and coaching is about the student.

Think about who your favorite teachers were. I bet you'll find that the thing that made them so great was not just the way they taught you. Most likely, they also watched how you did something and gave you great feedback.

The best teachers aren't just teachers. They're also coaches.

I think about this when I'm reading blog posts. There's a difference in tone in those that are coaching versus those that are teaching. People that teach talk about what they're doing, how they did something, and teach you how you can benefit from some of the same things that they've learned.

People that coach though, their posts seem to be based more on the observation of others, and then giving feedback based on those observations. It's a subtle difference, but an important one.

The other way this difference can be seen is based on how people react when you reach out to them. If you reach out to someone that's taught you something and you don't get a response, it just means that they can't coach you. If someone writes you back though, and gives you a little bit more insight or perspective based on an observation, then that's an entirely different kind of gift.

Coaching, by it's nature, is more scarce. One person can teach a room of 1,000 people how to do something. It's very difficult, if not impossible, for one person to coach 1,000 people because observing those 1,000 people would require an extraordinary amount of effort.

I point these differences out not to say that the teachers aren't doing enough. Again, it's simply impossible to coach as many people as you can teach. Instead, it's important to recognize and truly appreciate when someone takes those extra steps to observe what you've done and gives you feedback. They can't do it for everyone, and it's really important to understand that they've given you something much more rare than teaching.

Likewise, if you're teaching people, think about how you can coach someone now and then. Because when you do, you're taking a moment to invest in the student.

It isn't the point of coaching of course, but in return for doing so, you're likely to earn a true fan for life.

The first followers

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:26:00 +0000

By now hopefully you know the backstory - but if not, check it out so the rest of this post makes sense. In short, I'm going to execute on one idea that this guy comes up with and ship it by May 1st, 2010. And, I've opened up my project space to anyone who will commit to writing about the project once a week on their blog.

Already, 11 people have signed up to be a part of the project and blog about it and I wanted to share their blogs with you so you can check them out. It's crazy the diverse group of people that have already joined in on the fun. There are musicians, a fitness professional, someone who takes awesome self portraits of themselves, and a bunch of others.

There a are people from the US, the UK, and the Netherlands that are already part of the project.

It was pretty funny - I sent out a little welcome message to everyone yesterday after adding them to the project, and a couple responded by saying they weren't really sure what was going on yet, and I was thinking to myself - yeah, me either!

I've literally never done anything like this before so it's a little scary - but also really exciting. Here are some of my first followers - you should check out their blogs and read a bit about them.

It's really great that all these folks have signed up - and a few others have sent me notes saying that they're getting a blog going for this and will be sending me links - which is awesome.

Remember, anyone can sign up to be a part of the project - but only until March 3rd. Come on in, we'd love to have you join us.

Dancers need music

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:29:00 +0000

I thought a lot over the weekend about the Dance Party post I wrote, and the absolutely amazing response that I received. Derek even tweeted about it, Andrew Dubber wrote another post about it, and many of you commented on the post. I really feel like I've joined some huge thing and all of a sudden I'm.....well, I'm dancing.

I'm so excited I can barely contain myself.

I've also been struggling with something a little bit though. I want and need to follow Derek and Andrew's lead by doing everything I can to make sure that this project isn't about me, but continues to be about the larger idea. Embracing the reality that in our own way, when we follow someone first, we become leaders ourselves. But also understanding that the only way to lead is to make it easy for people to follow you and to embrace people that want to join in on the fun.

I've had to juxtapose this against the reality of managing a project; understanding that the more people that are involved, the more channels of communication there are, the more complex it becomes - the more difficult it is to then actually ship something on time.

My point is, I've been thinking about this a lot. I guess I just want you to know that I'm serious about not just executing on one of Andrew's ideas, but also in following Derek's original lead - that this is about giving not taking. It's about including, not excluding.

And so, I've come up with a couple things for my particular project that I think can make it possible for anyone that wants to join in on the fun to do so, while also giving me the appropriate amount of control over the project that's going to actually ship something.

Here's the plan:

1. Anyone in the world that wants to observe this project (the specific unknown thing that I'll be working on) can do so by filling out this form. I'm going to call you music makers - though you'll be dancers in your own right too. In exchange, you agree to write one blog post a week about the project. Anything you like. Good - bad - anything. If it's in the project space, you can write about it. One caveat - this invitation is open only until March 3rd, when Andrew Dubber begins publishing his ideas. Want to join in? Get in now!

2. All profits - every single last penny - of whatever is made will go to charity. My time will not be an expense for this project, but if I have to buy $3,000 in materials to make this "thing" then I'll recoup that. All profits though - they all go to charity. I'm currently talking with a non-profit that I like very much and I'm trying to get a few specifics worked out but I hope to have some more details by the end of the week.

There are a couple reasons as to why I'm doing these things. First, by opening up the project, I'm letting anyone that wants to follow to join in. One thing I became concerned about was that as a lot of people expressed an interest in helping, I didn't know who I was going to need help from to make the as of now unknown thing.

I thought about opening the project and saying, "we'll get together once I have the idea and figure out who's going to do what", but I fear that would possibly just make the scope fly out of control, bloat the project, and basically put everything at risk. Since the whole point is to actually ship something, I'm going to need to maintain a certain amount of control over my portion of the project.

This bring us to the other reason of letting anyone in. What's the point in making something if no one is going to know about it? One of the things that really stuck a cord with me in Seth Godin's latest book Linchpin is that "art", by it's definition, has to change people. And in order to change people, it must be received. So even though I don't know what we're going to be making yet, I know I want it to be received.

So spreading the word - continuing to make this dance as big as it can be - that's one thing I know I'm going to need help with. And, it'll let YOU be creative with how you want to follow.

If you play music - maybe you want to follow by writing a song. If your a cartoonist - maybe you want to make a drawing for the website. If you make videos.....you get the point.

By joining the project, you get to see what direction the idea/product/service/thingy that I'm working on is going - and if you want to let that influence your dance you can. You'll have access to every note, every conversation, every file......everything.

And so then this brings us to the second item above - donating any proceeds to charity. As I explained in a comment on Andrew's blog, Derek's idea started with giving, not taking. Plus, I know that I'm going to need help and I don't think helping me make money would be much of a motivator.

But what if collectively we all got together, and made and promoted something that literally changed peoples lives? What if Derek's act of giving away his idea spawned something that even he couldn't have imagined? What if a human being lives because I shipped something and you wrote about it?

And look, I know it's scary to care. Because when you care about something you can be disappointed. When you care about something you can fail. But remember, nothing worthwhile has ever been accomplished by people who didn't care.

I really hope you'll consider joining the project, and thank you so much for all the support you've already given me.

Podcast Episode Five - What can a project manager learn from a chef?

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 13:41:00 +0000

In this podcast episode of "What can a project manager learn from X?" I interview Dale Levitski, Executive Chef of Sprout Restaurant in Chicago and Season 3 Top Chef runner-up on Bravo's wildly popular TV show.

We talked about the creative process involved with making a new dish, the challenges involved with running a restaurant, and the process of training new chefs, and a host of other things. I had a blast doing this interview with Dale and am really grateful that he took the time to sit down with me.

Dale also writes and video blogs on The Sprout Crowd, which has quickly become one of the most popular food blogs in the city of Chicago.

I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did and can take something away from it that can help you better manage your projects, run your business, make your music, write your software or whatever it is that you're working on.

As always, you can listen right here on this blog, or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Thanks again Dale!

Dance Party

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 06:33:00 +0000

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

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 06:08:00 +0000

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

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:11:00 +0000

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

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:35:00 +0000

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

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:01:00 +0000

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?

Thoughts on the iPad

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:32:00 +0000

If you're interested in my take on the iPad, along with what it means to the Android world, check out this post on the Duarlander blog.

Short term planning does not mean short term thinking

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:08:00 +0000

One of the great things about the world of software development right now is the growing acceptance that you know more about something after you've started working on it, and understanding that you know the very least at the beginning of your project. This means less time spent up front trying to figure out every little detail, getting to work, and iterating as required.

This is a great approach and I've seen first hand how effective developing in this manner can be. The first version of GoFind! was designed and built in just under 6 weeks. We then released small updates about once a week for another four weeks. I kid around with my brother who works at a large insurance company that we probably built a product in less time than it would take them just to get a job requisition approved.

There's a significant distinction though that I don't feel like I hear many people talking about. Just because you aren't planning for everything far out in the future, doesn't mean you shouldn't be thinking about the future.

You still want to be aware of the direction you're heading.

Maybe you're a small company that wants to stay true to your core values, remain quick, and always be flexible. Because of this the actions you take today are done with the understanding of how you want your company to be in the future. You may not be planning for two years from now, but you're aware of how the decisions you make today will affect your overall goals. To me, this is long term thinking.

Let's take another, but this time more fun, example. You're leaving Chicago on a road trip out to Yosemite National Park in California. Instead of planning every detail of your trip though, you just decide that you'll stay at a hotel when it makes sense, camp where you can, eat when you feel like it, do some sightseeing along the way, and you're just going to take it easy. Awesome.

Here's the thing; this whole time you're still aware that you want to actually get to Yosemite. If during the course of your leisurely approach to getting there you find yourself heading Northeast for a couple hundred miles, it's probably a good idea to ask yourself if you still want to make it to California. Regardless of your answer, as long as you asked yourself that question, you just engaged in long term thinking.

In your world, this might mean understanding that separate systems are going to eventually need to communicate with each other in order to be effective. It might mean choosing WordPress for your client over building a website from scratch because you know they're going to want to maintain everything themselves. In another situation it might mean hiring a developer based not only on their proficiency in one programming language, but also the likelihood that they'll be able to learn another one.

As we spend less time planning for tomorrow, I believe we need to spend a little more time understanding how our actions today are going to affect us in the future.

If you're planning less, that's great. Just start thinking more as well.

You are a genius.

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 04:05:00 +0000

You are a genius. You don't think you are? Well Seth Godin does (he thinks I'm one too) and this is how he opens his new book Linchpin. After reading it you will see that you are, in fact, the genius he claims you to be. The only question that remains is whether you will choose to overcome the resistance.

This book is about art, politics, gifts, education, money, economics, business, society, fear, talent, love, evolution and leadership. I consider it an honor to have had the opportunity to read this book before it's public release on January 26th, and I'm humbled to be part of the crowd that is posting reviews.

Seth explains that much of what is happening in the world today is because we're in the midst of another kind of industrial revolution. Suddenly, success doesn't depend on fitting in, doing well in school, or landing the perfect job. Success now is loving what you do, creating art, and then (here's the hard part) showing it to the world by shipping it.

You don't do art? He's not talking about painting, or photography, though he certainly could be and does at times. He's talking about taking what you do, and doing it amazingly well. Doing it with emotional labor. Doing it in a way, essentially, that makes you irreplaceable.

Linchpins don't worry about a 15% unemployment rate. We're needed now more than ever before. Are you replaceable? Why?

We live in a world, Seth explains, where we are all manufacturers. The barrier to entry in the new factory of production is now a high speed internet connection and a computer. We have only just begun to see the transformation of our economy, and our society; and that this thing we call the internet is still in it's infancy. We live in a world where we can now, all of us, make something. We are all creators. We are all inventors. We are all artists.

We are all amazing.

Let me ask you a few questions. What if the education you received was designed to prepare you to work in a factory that no longer exists? What if instead of being rewarded for doing work you were rewarded for creating art? What if the "safe" thing was dangerous and the "dangerous" thing was actually safe? What if part of your brain was constantly working to hold you back?

Seth explains in Linchpin that these aren't "ifs", but instead outlines how we are, by in large, a people who have had the artist beaten out of us. We were trained to be replaceable cogs in a giant factory optimized for efficiency. A factory that, by the way, can be a row of cubicles in New York just as easily as it can be an assembly line in Detroit. Pretty much everyone in your life who has told you to fit in, that your idea was silly, that you should have a backup plan - they've all conspired to keep you from being amazing.

And then there's your lizard brain. This part of our brain controls our "fight or flight" response and other basic instincts. It's what kept us safe, alive and evolving. Now however, our Lizard brain is actually holding us back.

"Trust me", Seth seems to be saying, "you will not be eaten by a tiger if you publish that book, pitch that idea, give that speech, or write that book review."

Probably my favorite thing about this book though is the way it makes you feel about your ideas. I think the way Seth Godin would put it, is that he presents his ideas in a way that allow you to see them through your worldview. The result is, you don't feel as if you've just been given a bunch of ideas by someone, or that someone else has injected their beliefs into your brain. Rather, it's as if your own ideas have simply been shaken loose.

The skill this takes as a writer is almost beyond my comprehension.

What Seth Godin has done with Linchpin is motivated his reader to see their ideas, understand why they hold themselves back, and most importantly challenges us to create and ship.

There are few books in the world that can make you think you can be a better spouse, parent, artist, and business person all at the same time. His book is a gift to all of us, and I highly recommend you check it out.

You can buy Linchpin starting Tuesday, January 26th by way of Amazon, a regular book store, on the kindle, or as an audio book.

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In case you're interested in how I came into an early copy of the book, Seth gave his blog readers the opportunity to join him in a bit of an experiment when he wrote this post, giving us the first chance to review his new book before anyone else.

In 48 hours, Seth Godin gave away 3,000 copies of his book and raised over $100,000 for the Acumen fund.

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This post is also being published, verbatim, on another blog I write on at http://blog.duarlander.com

Duarlander Update

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:50:00 +0000

Readers of this blog know that a little while ago we launched Duarlander, a community based approach to application testing for the Android Operating System. In the past few days we've gotten a little press and have gained some nice traction.

We still have a ton of work to do to get the word out, but the past few days have been really exciting.

I'm also writing on the Duarlander Blog, so you may want to consider stopping by there every now and then or subscribing to that RSS feed as well.

New year, new direction, new website

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:24:00 +0000

I've mentioned previously that I was making some changes with my business this year, and along with this is the launch of a new website. The old site was feeling kind of out dated, and I didn't think it really shared the company's direction any longer.

When I started thinking about a site redesign, I kept coming back to the idea of having images that I could click on and then see the text from some of my favorite blog posts. I had actually started the search for someone to work with to redesign my site, but ultimately it turned out that I was going to have to do this myself. I've no doubt the people I was talking to would have done an awesome job, but I had to limit the amount of money I was going to spend.

Much to my delight, I came across a very minimalist template on ThemeForest that I liked quite a bit. ThemeForest allows you to download all the .css files, .html files, images, etc. For the non-technical of you, it's basically a pre-built website, but where you can edit the text and the images.

This template was great also because it demanded a bare minimum amount of content. It forced me to keep everything very short and to the point. My old website was filled with content, so this gave me the opportunity to see how something that's the polar opposite of my old site would perform in terms of people contacting me after visiting.

Huge thanks to Bill Labus of labusdesign for this great design. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and would love to hear what you think about it.

Time is not money

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 02:59:00 +0000

Over the next few weeks I'll be announcing some changes I'm making with Ideal Project Group, many of which are based on the following question: "If software can be a service, how can a service company be more like software?" A key component of answering this question is to charge a flat monthly fee for my services (and the results they help produce), as opposed to charging for my time by the hour.

This change is significant for more reasons than just answering the question above, and I think they're important to address in more detail.

Your supply of time is unknown

For a long time, and up until very recently, I subscribed to and bought into the notion that "time is money". I've realized lately however that this thinking is flawed.

Time is a finite resource, of which we all have unknown quantities, and it is therefore impossible to value accurately.

The simple economics of supply and demand can't even work because the supply is unknown. To make up for this, we guess at how much time we have and live our lives accordingly. We certainly try to put a dollar amount on it, but it's never really correct.

Saying "time is money" improperly devalues time by an extraordinary amount, as it's the one thing you can't make more of. You can make money, along with a host of other things, but you cannot make time.

Hourly pay penalizes efficiency and rewards inefficiency

Hopefully, as we become better at what we do, we also become more efficient. And if we're good, whatever it is we're producing is also of higher quality. The effect is we can produce better results with less effort and/or time being spent on a particular task.

This should be awesome, but if you're paid hourly, you're actually being penalized. You now need to continue spending the same amount of your one unknown resource just to remain in the same spot financially, even though you may have produced the same product/result.

Hourly pay is risky for people that are paying people hourly as well though. If you're paying someone to do a job, but paying them hourly, if they're prone to making mistakes or are just simply slow at what they do, you're being penalized. It's crazy, but there are multiple people I know who have told me stories of companies that let go of one person making $100/hr and ultimately ended up replacing them with 3 people that are paid $40/hr.

Value should be placed on what you help produce

The answer to all of this is to charge (and pay) for services the same way SaaS companies charge for their services. A flat monthly fee. By doing this, you place the value of your service where it belongs, on your results.

A month is still a unit of time of course, but instead of charging for the time itself, you begin charging for what you produce during a given time period. I think this is a world of difference.

If you're paying someone this way, then you don't need to care how much time they spend on whatever it is their working on. You only need to know that they produced what you were expecting and feel that you paid a fair amount for that result. If they were slow and it took them 50 hours a couple weeks you don't get penalized.

If they were fast, efficient, and produced a quality result, then they get a little more time to do whatever it is they please.

Aligned Incentives

The idea behind all this is that the incentives are more properly aligned. The person buying the services is protected a little more because they're buying a result, not a unit of time. And the person who's producing is being rewarded, as they should be, for doing quality work in a shorter period of time. Again, they're being paid for what they produce, not a unit of time.

This is not fixed bid

The last point I want to make about this is that it's not the same as fixed bid pricing. A lot of contractors are scared of fixed bids, with good reason, because it requires that everything about a project to be known up front which is pretty much impossible.

Instead, this pricing model simply embraces the new reality of software development (and other types of projects) by allowing two parties to agree on what the results of one's efforts should be over the course of a month and a dollar amount that those results are worth.

There are a host of other reasons I am moving to this model, including the way in which it helps provide greater clarity for a project team while also making it more flexible, that I intend to write about as well.

It is sufficient to say in the meantime however that I think this may very well be the future of the entire professional services industry, and it's the direction I'm taking my company. If you're intrigued, I hope you'll consider joining me.

Working like it's 1999

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 07:35:00 +0000

It's almost impossible for me to get through new year festivities without thinking of Prince's 1999. This year though it made me realize something; a lot of people are still working like it's 1999.

Seriously, think about how you communicated in the office 11 years ago. You were probably using Microsoft Word, email, the telephones and fax machines to communicate. You were probably going into work every day, commuting, attending meetings, and doing whatever it is that you do.

Are you really working any differently than you did in 1999?

You may work on a faster computer, with a faster internet connection, and you might be making cooler stuff. You're certainly being distracted in new ways and talking to your friends in new ways. But most likely, when it comes to communicating and collaborating with people on your projects, there's a good chance you're doing it the same way you did a decade ago.

Why?

In a world where my mom who "hates computers" is video chatting with my kids over Skype, why don't more companies have a distributed workforce? Why does your conference room have a phone instead of a video phone? (If you even need a conference room at all.) Why are contracts still signed with ink? Why are we using fax machines for anything? Why isn't everyone in a company using some sort of collaboration tool for everything? Why doesn't every department inside your company have a blog about the things they're working on?

We all have amazing tools at our disposal that allow us to get more done in less time. They can can free us from daily commutes, allow us to search for (and work with) talent from around the world, and in so many ways improve every aspect of our daily working lives.

Maybe if we start working like it's 2010, we'll be able to party like it's 1999.

Government Idiocy and how not to manage a project

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:28:00 +0000

60 Minutes had a great segment Sunday night about a "Virtual Fence" project that's being conducted along the US/Mexico border. The idea is that there's a host of motion detectors, cameras, and other gadgets that can identify people trying to cross the border. Once spotted, border patrol can be deployed to "intercept" people before they get in.

The problem?

The people building the system didn't actually talk to the border patrol. You know, the people that would actually use the system. They basically built it in a silo, didn't talk to users, didn't iterate, and shipped a product that doesn't really work. Oh, by the way, you and I paid for it.

I'm sure they had a lot of fancy documents though.

Hey, US Government, if you need help getting this thing straightened out give me a call. My number is 773.932.1138.

Check out the absurdity below:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Podcast Episode Three - What can a project manager learn from the director of human rights projects?

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:32:00 +0000

Daniel Rothenberg is the Managing Director of International Projects for the International Human Rights Law Institute at DePaul University's College of Law, and he was kind enough to join me for Project Idealism's second full podcast.

Daniel oversees numerous Human Rights projects, and in this episode the primary topic of our discussion is The Iraq History Project. Taking a victim centered approach to documenting various Human Rights violations under Saddam Hussein’s regime, this project is one of the largest independent human rights data collection and analysis projects in the world

We discuss how a project of this size got going, how interviewers were recruited and trained, how the stories of victims were shared, and how that information was carried through Iraq - often times without power and always without internet access - to offices in Northern Iraq.

Daniel shares some fascinating information about the specifics of their project and provides numerous lessons not only for project managers or those in business, but anyone interested in how amazing people do amazing work.

Daniel has been a guest on NPR's Worldview, and is also the author of With These Hands: The Hidden World of Migrant Farmworkers Today.

I truly can't thank Daniel enough for his participation with the Project Idealism podcast.

Let's try this again shall we?

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:00:00 +0000

Readers of this blog know that back in November I started a new company called Duarlander, and wrote about it in a post titled The Birth of a new company.

Since that time we've learned a lot and have made some major changes. We basically reinvented everything about what we're doing with the company and are working to create a community of developers and testers.

The full story behind the changes can be found in this blog post, and if you took a minute to read what we did I would really appreciate it.

If you know anyone with an Android phone, let them know there's now a way they can make money just by testing out the latest and greatest applications. And if you know any Android developers, we'd love it if you could send them on over to Duarlander to get their applications tested.

Understanding your place on Rogers' bell curve

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 05:10:00 +0000

A couple of the things I've learned about from some of the people I mentioned in this post are the technology adoption life-cycle and the Rogers' bell curve. Click on the image, courtesy of Wikipedia, for a sharper graphic:

* This image published in accordance with terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License, and the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

The links above provide more detail, but the brief summary is that ideas spread through a population first by reaching innovators, then early adopters, then the early majority and so on. Sometimes ideas make it out of the "innovator" group and other times they don't. It is the ability of an idea (or a product, service, etc) to move into the early majority and the late majority categories that cause it to become mainstream.

Most of what I've read and heard about generally seems to be in the context of understanding your place on this curve for the various things we consume, whether your idea could flow through the population, and who you are creating things for. You may, for example, only want to create something for innovators or laggards/very late adopters.

It seems that there's a much less often discussed (although it's certainly possible I've just missed the discussion), but very important aspect of looking at this curve and understanding where you fall on it from a creative and innovative standpoint. This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and I think it can help us figure out how we can all start creating something right now, if we want to.

Let's take my mother as an extreme example - she is comfortable checking email and surfing the web a very little, and learned to use Skype because it allows her to see and talk with her grandchildren even if she's far away. That's about the extent of her knowledge on how to use the internet. If she were to decide to start a new company, where would she be more likely to succeed - teaching the elderly how to use email, or trying to teach high school kids how to use WordPress?

Her innovative energy, right now anyway, would be better spent on creating something for those who are a little further to the right on Rogers' curve from where she currently resides. To me, my mom may not be a technology innovator. But to a grandparent living in Florida who just learned how to use Skype, she might be the most tech savvy person they know.

You don't need to be an "innovator" on Rogers' curve in order to create something.

The other benefit of understanding where we fall on this curve is that it can help us direct our energy in the right place. Let's take someone at the other end of the spectrum from my mother, say at the front end of early adopters. If with just a bit more energy (learning a new programming language, understanding a new design concept, etc.) they could dramatically increase their innovative potential then maybe that's where they should be focusing their energy. Maybe they shouldn't try to create something for all those people to the right of them quite yet.

It's up to each of us individually to figure out how and where to spend our innovative energy.

One thing that seems to be true in any case though, is that as we begin to create things, we move further to the left on this curve. The process of creating and teaching requires us to learn and understand more about technology. In turn, we reach another level at which we're able to innovate and there's another group of people that we can help.

This process however, at least with me, can create an internal struggle. I realize now for example, in a way I hadn't before, how closely intertwined design and technology are, and I think I'm definitely further to the right on Rogers' curve from a design standpoint than say an "internet" standpoint.

There are times when I come across or am introduced to a website like FictiveKin or Sofa and I feel like running and hiding. How dare I put something like the Duarlander or the GoFind! sites on the same internet as them! And I seriously wonder, would they be mad at me for making their internet less beautiful?

The things is, we have to practice, and the nature of the internet requires that we practice publicly.

So the best I can tell is that if we're honest with ourselves about where we are on this curve, then there is someone for whom we can create something. And as long as we're trying to learn from the people to the left of us, then we're respecting what they've created so far. We're simply playing our natural role in the evolution of an idea - and conscious that we don't want to ruin anyone's "favorite slice of the web" as Seth Godin wrote about in this post.

I think this is a pretty good place to be.

Update

I feel like I should mention, when I was talking about the Duarlander site above, I was referring to the old one. I'm very happy with the new one and think it's really awesome.

The GoFind! one's pretty decent too, my point was simply that there are some others on a different level entirely.

A year of inspiration, action, tragedy, fear, hope, and love

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 04:56:00 +0000

A lot happened in my little world in 2009. As I look back, I realize the things I remember the most, and the events that have impacted me, are because of the people who have touched my life in one way or another. Some are family, some friends, some people I've met only once and others I've never even met. I thought it would be nice to enter 2010 by taking a moment to look at the people that had such an affect on my 2009.

I simply can't begin this post without writing about my cousin Cameron. He had just received his bachelors degree, when a few weeks after graduation he was killed in a bus accident. Our family was changed forever. Prior to his death, Cameron registered to be an Organ Donor and his heart, lungs, kidneys, liver and other organs have saved numerous lives. Cameron lived his life fully and he was truly loved by a lot of people.

His death is a reminder that life is fragile; that what we do with the time we do have matters. That very few things in this world are permanent, and that behind everything we're doing, what matters to us all the most are the relationships that we have with other human beings.

A website has been set up as a tribute to Cameron's life and can be found at CameronChana.org. If you would like to register as an organ donor, you can do so for any state in the United States at DonateLife.com. It takes only a minute, and it's a way you can help Cameron continue to impact people even after his passing.

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Jason Fried and 37Signals have been a huge inspiration to me. They make a project collaboration software called basecamp (along with three other products) and it is without any doubt my favorite software to use when managing a project. I often joke with people that in an ideal world we wouldn't even need project managers, and I think Basecamp actually brings that reality a little closer.

Some people think I'm a fanboy, but I think they've created something revolutionary that has changed my profession for the better. They also wrote a book called Getting Real that's about software development and we applied a lot of what they teach when we built GoFind. I believe every project manager should read Getting Real, and they have another book coming out in March titled ReWork that looks like it will be awesome as well. They preach a gospel of simplicity with a focus on superb design, and advocate vigorously the advantages of being a small business and working with small businesses.

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Because I thought so highly of Basecamp, I started learning more about the people and the company behind the product. By way of following Jason Fried on twitter I learned of Derek Sivers. Derek founded a company called CD baby to help independent artists sell their music. He later sold it, but not before giving the company to a foundation he started to promote music education. His blog at sivers.org is a treasure chest full of great information that could benefit just about anyone.

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Seth Godin is a marketing genius and as sure as the sun comes up in the morning there's a blog post in my feed reader from him. I had first heard of Seth Godin when a book he wrote titled Purple Cow came out, but it wasn't until this year that I really became engaged in what he was saying. I went to a seminar that I wrote about back in November, and it had a significant impact on the way I view business, marketing, social media, and a whole host of other things. Seth Godin has written over 10 books, and has another one coming out this month called Linchpin: Are you indispensable? I have read about half his books and will continue to read them until I have finished them all.

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I don't even remember how I first heard of Dragos Roua, but I'm pretty sure it was by clicking through random people on Twitter and I stumbled across him. I've followed his blog pretty regularly for a few months now, but there was one post he wrote titled How to be Ridiculous that was exactly what I needed to hear at exactly the right time. I'll never forget it.

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Mike Shedlock is the author of Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis and a wonderful source for economic news. While I don't agree with everything he writes, I've never questioned his honesty and he's become one of my most trusted sources for economic news.

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The anonymous writers at ZeroHedge have been talking truth to power in a way unlike any others I've read. They produce so much good material that it's nearly impossible to keep up with their feed. They've uncovered a whole mess of things related to the economy, government, and politics and teach us all how powerful a free voice can be.

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I'm very grateful for all the work that Theresa Valdez, Camri McAvoy, RedDroid Software, and Michael Maitlen did to make GoFind a reality. We released our first version in just 5 and 1/2 weeks and continued to tweak things over the course of another 5 releases. We're not done with GoFind yet, but getting it out and having my first product out in the world felt really great. I still remember jumping up and down on the roof of my building like a little kid the very first time it worked the way I envisioned it.

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My father who overcame a brain tumor, and my mother who has been with him every step of the way, teach me constantly what it means to love the people in your life.

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My family - Maile, Leila and Kai - are the most important people in the world to me. Unless everything is all right with them, none of the other stuff I've talked about in this post matters. A lot of times people in business talk about family and kids as if they were burdens that prevent us from doing great things and reaching for our dreams. I don't feel this way. I'm grateful for every minute that they're with me on this journey through life and wouldn't have it any other way.

A sincere thanks to everyone for making 2009 so extraordinary, and I can only hope 2010 brings the same amount of inspiration - but with none of the tragedy.

Happy new year.

Unnatural Search

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 04:32:00 +0000

When I started Ideal Project Group three years ago, I thought it was really important for my website to appear quickly when people were searching for terms relevant to my business. My thinking at the time went something like this: If people can't find you on Google, then you don't exist!

My thinking was flawed, and I'd like to share what I did wrong so that you don't make the same mistake.

As we're all aware, the engines have "natural" search results, and then paid advertising. There's a third category though, which is more like unnatural search. These are search results that appear in the "natural" search part of whatever search engine you use, but are there because of some unnatural behavior.

A couple years ago I submitted two articles to various "e-zine" publications, and would also send out the occasional press release. The idea is that you get the word about your company out there, and then by these articles and press releases linking back to your site, you increase your website's ranking for various search terms. And for some search terms, this "worked" really well.

The problem is, like with most interventions, there are side-effects.

Because they were written by me, these articles are the first thing you see if you Google my name. (You also get a Barack Obama post I wrote on their forum during the election that I'm pretty sure no human ever linked to so you know they did something funky.)

The problem is, these aren't the most relevant links about me. My blog, or Ideal Project Group, or Twitter or Facebook - sure. But these two random articles? It's an unnatural result because of unnatural behavior that I took. The other problem is that they certainly don't represent my best writing or my best thinking.

My point is, had these been the first couple posts on a blog, as opposed to widely distributed articles, they would be seen as the starting point into other, better writings. Or more likely, they would have just sat buried in the bottom of my blog. In other words, they would be living in the world in their appropriate context. The reality is, the "natural" search results today would probably be more relevant had I just accepted the fact that my website wasn't going to get noticed for a little while.

If you remain unconvinced that you shouldn't do this, I'll leave you with this thought: What's worse, not being noticed when you first start out - or writing a blog post about your irrelevant links even after you've been in business for a few years?

Watching the death of the movie industry

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 21:46:00 +0000

I spent Christmas with my wife Maile's family in California this year, as we tend to alternate holidays every year between her family in California and mine in Chicago. As I assume is the case with many couples, we tend to take on the traditions of the other when going through the holiday activities.

While growing up, Maile's family would go to the movies each year. This was really odd to me the first time I experienced it. I come from a very large family with both of my parents' siblings all being in the Chicago area. There's about 10 aunts and uncles, almost 30 cousins, and scores of other friends that would join us on Christmas afternoon. My point is, we were basically going from one family function to another from about 5pm on Christmas Eve to about 11:00pm on Christmas day. There wasn't time for the movies. I've come to learn though that a lot of people go to the movies on Christmas. In fact, you probably knew this already so forgive me for being tardy on the tradition.

Over the last couple years I've started to enjoy this whole movies on Christmas thing quite a bit. It get's us out of the house, provides some down time between a hectic morning and an even more hectic dinner time, and just generally brings a couple of hours of relaxation to the holiday.

But this year it was different. The first full hour of this extremely popular holiday tradition was totally ruined for me. Why? Because this gargantuan screen was screaming terrible commercials at me from the moment I walked in. As in, for Walmart, for CocaCola, for cars, for toys. NON-STOP FROM THE SECOND I WALKED IN. Then of course there were about 30 minutes of previews.

For a bunch of people that make fun of TV, those in the movie business sure are acting like small screen people - trying to hawk every last little bit of screen space to any bidder they can find.

It appears that the people who own movie theaters have forgotten that they are selling an experience. And this experience get's more and more terrible with every day that passes. It reminds me of the scene in Office Space when "Peter" is talking about how every day of his life is the worst day of his life. That's how I feel about the movies. Each time I go, it's the worst experience I've ever had at the movies.

I have news for you movie industry people; if you don't realize you're selling more than just a bigger picture on a bigger screen, you're even more incompetent than I already think you are.

I understand now why Maile's tradition with her family was so enjoyable. While I didn't experience it as a child directly, I can imagine it. I remember as recently as 10 or 15 years ago, before the movie played, there was just music. It was nice to talk to your friends, or your date, settle in, relax, and then the movie would start. I can imagine how nice this would be with your family on Christmas day - enjoying the company of people you love.

This year I went with Maile, her brother, and his fiance of one day. That's right, he got engaged on Christmas eve! When we got to the movie theater, bought our $10 popcorn , $5 bottle of water, and settled in, did we get to talk about his engagement? How he proposed? About their excitement?

No. We were screamed at by a huge screen playing television commercials.

The movie industry wasn't thinking about how my (or your) Christmas day experience at the movies would go. All they thought about was that there was a large audience and they figured the cost of annoying you and I would be worth the price of selling a bunch of advertising space. I think their calculations are wrong.

What if instead they made Christmas at the movies special? What if there was only music playing again - even if just on this one day? What if instead of screaming at you, they allowed you to talk to your family? What if their aim on Christmas day wasn't to sell as much advertising as possible, but was instead to give us the best movie experience possible?

Of course, they didn't do all that. Because the movie industry as we know it is dying. And for acting the way they did to me (and you) this weekend, it deserves to die.

Maybe next year I'll rent a movie from iTunes or stream something on NetFlix. After all, if the experience of going to the movies is terrible, they have absolutely nothing to sell me.

Thank you for the gifts!

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 21:07:00 +0000

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?

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:08:00 +0000

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 - What can a project manager learn from an artist?

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 23:09:00 +0000

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

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:42:00 +0000

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

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:21:00 +0000

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!

Podcast Episode One - An Introduction

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:43:00 +0000

I'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

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:04:00 +0000

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

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 06:10:00 +0000

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.

No one can have your perspective

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 20:39:00 +0000

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.

On Fear

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:35:00 +0000

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.

Happy Reflection Day

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:58:00 +0000

Since my late teens, I've always struggled with Thanksgiving. I'm simply unable to observe the holiday without thinking about the slaughter of Native Americans, and this state of mind doesn't exactly lend itself to being joyous about anything.

In the modern day of course, it seems Thanksgiving is as much about shopping as it is about anything else. The reason Thanksgiving is even on the fourth Thursday in November (instead of the last as was tradition since Lincoln) is because President Roosevelt was concerned that if the holiday shopping season was delayed by a week it would further cripple the economy during the great depression. It's as if the holiday has become one big national reminder that we're a bunch of consumers. Again, not exactly something to be joyous about.

I suppose the problem I have isn't taking time to be thankful, but doing so without reflecting on how we got what we're thankful for.

I can't help but wonder, what would be different if my ancestors tried to learn more from Native Americans instead of murder them? What would our country look like if we hadn't felt the need to conquer half a continent? What would be different if we had more respect for the land?

So this time of year, in addition to identifying what I'm thankful for, I also like to reflect so that I can determine whether I'm on the right path. I like to identify the things that went well so I can repeat them, and determine what I did incorrectly in the hope that I can avoid the same mistakes.

In addition to giving thanks, I think it's healthy to take the time to reflect.

Happy Reflection Day.

In order to win, you must be willing to lose

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:58:00 +0000

On Thursday I went to the best business session I've ever been to. Seth Godin presented for about an hour and then followed it up with roughly six hours of question and answer with the group of about 75 business owners, marketers, and others navigating through the challenges associated with running a business.

There was fantastic information, insight and advice. Seth talked about being remarkable, and that doing so requires the willingness to fail. He talked about focusing obsessively on a nitch, and being the best at it. He talked about how you need to be prepared for the people that will criticize you for being remarkable. That taking a stand, having opinions, and being noteworthy will win you fans, but it will also earn you some detractors. And that this is okay.

There were so many themes for the day that it may not even be appropriate to try and sum it up in one statement. I'll try anyway though by saying that the collective message I took away was that in order to win, you must be willing to lose.

The Yankees could have opted to not try and win the World Series. That would have been ridiculous though right? They were willing to lose for the glory you get when you win.

When we're sitting out, not taking the action that we know we need to take; it's not that we're losing, we're forfeiting. We're not even playing. We took our ball and went home. Isn't that terrible?

Duarlander may not be as big of a hit as I think it can be. GoFind! may never become the next must-have application. The new things I'll be doing with Ideal Project Group may not win over everyone. But I will not forfeit.

I'm trying to win; and I'm willing to risk losing in order to do so.

Naiveté is an asset

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:41:00 +0000

Towards the end of last week I visited one of my clients, Voxeo, to discuss a new project I'm working on. While on the trip I had the opportunity to meet with Dave Hoff, one of the co-founders of imified which was recently acquired by Voxeo. For a little background, imified makes it easy for developers to "IM enable" their applications. Essentially, it allows users to communicate with web applications by using chat clients such as AOL Instant Messenger, gtalk, and other common chat protocols.

I love talking to entrepreneurs about how their businesses got started and the challenges they encountered; I get a ton of inspiration by talking to them. While I was chatting with Dave about how imified got started, he said that had they known how difficult integrating with all the different public chat protocols was, they probably would never have gotten off the ground.

When he said this I recalled a special I watched about the Chudnovsky brothers and their work with the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. They had to merge the data from numerous high resolution digital photographs of the tapestries for a project with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These brothers are two brilliant mathematicians and when talking about the project they basically said that there was no way they would have taken it on had they known how difficult it was going to be. Once they got started of course, they had to finish.

Naiveté, it turns out, is an asset.

Have you ever had an idea and shared it with someone who knows a lot in that particular field? Likely they dismisses it, stating how difficult or complex it would be. They'll give you a host of reasons as to why the consumer won't buy it, or why it can't be built, or if it can be built and the consumer would buy it, why marketing it would be so hard that no one would find out about it anyway.

The problem is, they're burdened with the knowledge of all the difficulties that inevitably lie ahead. In their minds, the challenges dwarf any possible benefit. They don't understand the dream because they're too hung up on the effort that would be involved.

Their knowledge is a liability.

This isn't to say that expertise is bad. Becoming an expert, and working with experts, is probably an inevitability of any successful person or business. My point however, is that before you do anything, you have to get started. Anything that helps you get started is an asset.

Just imagine, how many people would have children if it weren't for a little naiveté? Who would put in thousands of hours of school and internships working to become an MD? Who would be a teacher?

If you have the opportunity to start something, don't let the fact that you don't know everything prevent you from trying. Very likely, the reason you're even willing to make the attempt is because you're "naive" enough to try. This instantly gives you a leg up on your competition.

Sometimes knowing too much can be a liability, embrace your naiveté.

Investing in yourself

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:52:00 +0000

After having recently hired an employee, built GoFind!, and now having started Duarlander, a few people have asked me exactly why I'm spending the money to do all this - especially given the state of the economy. I figured I'd use this as an opportunity to share a little about my perspective on a few things as it relates to investing, risk, and the overall economy.

First, the money I'm spending on these initiatives are investments in either Ideal Project Group or Duarlander. It's not like I'm spending money taking friends out to dinner or blowing it on liquor.

Second, while it's certainly not cheap to do these things, relative to the potential reward the risk is pretty small. I've said numerous times, if building GoFind! helps Ideal Project Group get into managing software projects for hand-held devices, it's paid for itself even if I don't sell a single download.

Third and probably most importantly, the stock market is now nothing more than a national casino. It is no longer a place to invest, it's a place to gamble. Some people are good at gambling; I however, am not. And just like a casino, the house always wins and they don't really care what happens to you. Giving your money to a 401(k) manager is no different than funding a poker player and sending them to Vegas. In fact, there's probably some poker players that your money would be safer with.

Fourth, a lot of companies lie about their earnings and their assets. Citibank can say they're profitable because they're now allowed to lie about how much their assets are worth. Hey, guess what, you know all those phones I had to buy for Duarlander? I've decided they're each worth $100,000. Duarlander is a $700,000 company and it hasn't even been around a month, isn't that awesome! Give me a break.

What this all means is that the money I might have otherwise used to invest in public companies (by way of a 401(k), Roth IRA, or other investment vehicle) for retirement, my children's education or general savings is now being invested in businesses that I own and control instead of companies that I own a tiny fraction of and have no control over.

The amount of money I'm investing hasn't changed. Where I'm investing it has.

We've all been sold the story that the safe and conservative thing to do with our money is to give it to someone else and let them decide what to do with it. That the risky thing to do is invest in yourself and start your own business. I believe this is complete nonsense. The safe and conservative thing to do with your money is to keep it in your possession, invest in companies that you own, and keep these companies under your control.

Sending your money into the electronic casino where computers change the value of a company by 30% in minutes is what's risky.

Invest in yourself.

Get Unconfused

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:00:00 +0000

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is being willing to make a decision while you're confused about something. Or worse, not even realizing that a decision has to be made because you were content with not understanding a situation. It happens in the world of project management all the time, especially with new project managers. The best advice I can give people about this is to be comfortable with what you don't know, and have enough confidence in yourself to dig for answers.

Unfortunately, many people are unwilling to do this because they fear it will make them look stupid, or afraid it will agitate people on their team. The thing to keep in mind is that for every person you may be agitating, there's probably three or four more that are thirsting for the clarity that your questions will provide. As for looking stupid, it's just simply not true.

Think of it like this; the President of the United States can't be an economist, a general, a spy, a small business owner, and a doctor. However, it's perfectly reasonable that we expect the President to make informed decisions based on a series of discussions and questions with these people who are experts in their respective areas.

The key is to understand the difference between getting the proper perspective on a situation so the right decisions can be made, and getting too deep into the details of someone's work. It's true that it can be a fine line sometimes, but generally speaking after a couple questions it'll become clear as to whether you need to back off or continue asking more questions.

A software developer probably isn't going to want to sit down and explain every detail of their work to you. However, it's fine for you to ask why one requirement is being completed before something else that you know is more important, and that another team is waiting on. Maybe there's a technical reason, and if there is, the developer should be more than happy to explain it to you. If you get an answer that doesn't make sense based on your understanding of the situation, don't just walk away confused. Get clarification.

You may end up with new information that changes your perspective of the situation, which you can then share with others and in effect become an advocate for the developer. Or, you may realize that the developer misunderstood their priorities. Either way, your project will be better off because you were willing to ask questions.

This, by the way, isn't something that applies only to project managers or business. There's a whole world of people that thrive on you not understanding something. (Think banks, credit cards, politicians, lawyers, car dealers, and realtors) And, they count on you not being confident enough in yourself to probe them with questions to get the clarity you need to make the right decision. The best example of this is to go into a car dealership, talk to them about leasing a car, and start asking them all sorts of questions about the money factor. It'll totally freak them out and I promise you, they will have no idea how to answer your questions without getting "the finance guy."

The Birth of a New Company

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:54:00 +0000

One of the things I love about running my own business (and life really) is that in two or three months, you can find yourself doing something you never would have expected.

This happened to me once again recently, and I'm announcing today a new company I've started named Duarlander. I had no idea two months ago that I would be doing this, but here I am, starting my second company. So, how did this happen?

Readers of this blog know that Ideal Project Group just recently launched our first internal product called GoFind!, which is a mobile application for the Android Operating System. While we were working on the project, we noticed there were some minor differences in the way the application would work on the G1 vs. the myTouch - both phones that run Android. There were a couple minor bugs that needed to be fixed, but that only appeared on the myTouch. In most cases the bugs were very minor, but when present caused the application at times to not even open.

I thought to myself, how am I going to know if this application works on all these other devices that are coming out? Then I thought, everyone that's developing applications for Android is probably going to have this question. That's when I decided to start Duarlander.

Duarlander is an application testing business where we'll test Android applications for developers on every device. We have purchased every Android phone that's been released in the US, and we'll continue to do so as more devices become available. I hope that at some point we'll also buy devices that have been released in other countries, but for now we're starting with just the US market. You can learn more about Duarlander by checking out the website.

I don't know of course what's going to happen in the long run. Is it possible Android 2.0 is going to solve all these issues? It's possible, but I suspect as handset manufacturers continue to customize the User Experience, differences in the way some apps work on various phones will continue to persist. Either way, I feel this business has very real potential and I wanted to give it a go.

I'm also trying something somewhat unconventional with the launch of the business. I honestly have no idea what we should be charging for the service, so I'm not going to pretend I know. We're going to offer our services for free for a little while, and in exchange we're asking the Android community to answer two simple questions:

1) How much should we charge?
2) How much would you be willing to donate today?

We're going to take these two pieces of information and determine our pricing structure in about a month - unless it becomes clear sooner than that. In the meantime, if you're a developer shoot us an email to get your app tested on all the devices that have been released so far. I'll keep posting updates about the business on this blog, and hopefully we'll have exciting news to share in the coming weeks.

Lessons from a birthday party

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:25:00 +0000

Two weeks ago, I threw a surprise party for my wife's 35th birthday. The sole purpose was of course to have a good time and celebrate my wife Maile. In the process of planning the party though, I learned (or in some cases re-learned) some pretty valuable lessons about running a small business. Most of these lessons seem simple and obvious, but they're worth recognizing and calling out none the less.

Initially, I was going to have the party at one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants. The food is good, it has a great atmosphere, and I thought it would be nice to give the business to a restaurant in our community. After all, restaurants are feeling the impact of this recession as much as anybody. After a lot of back and forth and numerous phone calls, I still had the party in our neighborhood - but it was at a different place than I had originally wanted.

So.....what happened? It wasn't one thing, but was instead a series of events. First, there was an issue with how much space I needed and the owner was concerned about having to turn away too many people. Once we worked that out, then there were concerns over whether we could really have an open bar. Once we came to an agreement on that, then there were problems over how much food would be available and what kind of food would be included. At one point I even asked, "well, can I just make a reservation for 30 people and pay for everything on a normal tab?" The answer: "No, because you guys might end up staying all night and my tables wouldn't turn over."

Over the course of our conversations the price changed three times, the "open bar" became pre-purchasing a certain number of drinks, and reserving our space became having the space unless there was a chance someone else wanted it in which case we might have to split our party up. Then a contract came over, via fax because the owner didn't have an e-mail address, outlining a different agreement than what we had discussed.

All I wanted to do was throw a nice little party for my wife, and all of a sudden it felt like I was planning a full blown wedding reception. It was getting ridiculous.

The final straw was when the owner said: "You know, we're going to have 30 people eat at our restaurant whether you have your party here or not." With that single statement he told me that he didn't care one bit about getting my business or me as a customer.

Contrast this with ElCid, a great little Mexican restaurant in Logan Square where I ultimately ended up having the party. I called them up and told them how many people I was having. They had a room upstairs available that we could use and there was $100 deposit. They told me how much the open bar would be per person, or if I wanted I could just pay as we went like a normal tab. He e-mailed me a menu that I selected a bunch of appetizers from to get started and then allowed people to order whatever meal they wanted once they arrived.

Everything was easy.

When I saw how simple it was to work with ElCid, the decision was made. I'm a firm believer that the way someone works with you before an engagement begins is how they'll work with you throughout an entire project. The experience with the other restaurant left me wondering how much, or what kind, of a headache I was going to have to deal with the night of my wife's birthday.

There are a host of lessons coming out of this experience that I want to remind myself of and apply to how I run my own business:

Lesson #1: If you can't, or don't want, to do something - just say so. If the first place had just said "hey, we'd love to help but we don't do parties" everything would have been fine. I'd still be a happy customer. Instead, they irritated me to the point where I don't want to give them any of my business.

Lesson #2: People like it when you trust them. No one at ElCid even asked me for a credit card until the end of the party - it was quite refreshing to have that level of trust given to me. Everything has gotten to the point where we're always trying to protect ourselves from any possible loss, that we're very likely alienating people that might otherwise do business with us because we act like they can't be trusted.

Lesson #3: The easier you are to work with, the more people will enjoy working with you. If you make people use a fax machine, you aren't easy to work with. Period.

Lesson #4: If you put something in writing - it better match exactly what you said verbally. If you send over something in writing that doesn't match exactly what you said - you either look like an idiot or a liar.

Lesson #5: Know your business. The fact that the first place struggled mightily with the open bar, when every other restaurant I ever talk to knows how much they would charge, tells me that they don't have a good grasp on basic financial components of their business.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, most of these are obvious, but it's easy to forget these lessons when entering into discussions with a potential client. I'm going to try and make sure I keep these at the front of my mind next time I'm discussing an opportunity with someone.

GoFind! has been released

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:32:00 +0000

I'm really excited to announce that we've launched the Android application we've been working on called GoFind!. It's available in the Android Market for purchase right now. So, what is GoFind!?

GoFind! is an application that was designed to solve a very specific problem - getting two people together who are trying to find each other. For example, let's say you're at Lollapalooza or Taste of Chicago, or you're just in the park. But you look around and realize...you need to meet up with your friend, and you have no idea where they are. Now what? You can text each other and try to give vague directions ("I'm by this big tree...you know, the one we were by earlier? By the other tree?") or you can call each other and attempt to be heard over the noise ("Where are you?" "What?!!" "What?"). OR, you can now GoFind! each other.

Using Global Positioning Systems, the internal accelerometer and text messaging the app is really powerful, but very simple to use. Try it! You will be lead directly to your friend as the initiator of the GoFind! request, and as the Target you will see what direction your friend is coming from. It's pretty awesome.

The finder screen points the finder to their friend:

The target screen tells the target where their friend is coming from:

Art by a three year old

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:11:00 +0000

My daughter Leila goes to a public Montessori school in the city of Chicago. According to the teacher, "after learning about Piet Mondrian, students used his artwork as inspiration for their own artwork." This is what Leila made:

Business related? Nope - just have the proud father thing going on and thought it would be fun to put on my blog. Happy Friday everyone.

When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:20:00 +0000

If everything you want to do is a priority, it's no different than not having any priorities at all. Everything can be important, but it can't all be the most important.

It's very easy to get caught up in all the various things we want to do, and this is something I struggle with myself. Sometimes I'll feel like I'm having an explosion of ideas, but there's simply no way to do everything. And as we all know, an idea with no execution behind it isn't going to get you anywhere.

While there are a host of theories about how to best prioritize projects (and I have my own opinions about how work should be prioritized) the first step is at least understanding that you do indeed have to come up with your priorities. Without prioritization, everything gets a little attention, but almost nothing is actually completed. Even worse, you're probably losing a lot of momentum on almost everything and expending a great amount of energy with very little return. (For more on this, please see the importance of momentum.)

This seems sort of obvious, but I think a lot of companies still struggle tremendously with this concept, and it's understandable. It's really hard taking what may very well be a great idea and pushing it off until later. It's tempting to try and take on that one additional thing without having to give up anything. The problem is, it almost never works out that way - something always has to give.

I think this is why so many people (and I certainly put myself in this category) don't get enough sleep - we simply don't make it a top priority.

If you're finding that you aren't getting as much work done as you think you should, or if you feel really busy but don't have as much to show for your work as you would expect, you may simply need to take a step back and prioritize your work.

Sometimes pausing everything and figuring out your priorities is the best action you can take.

No information is better than bad information

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:54:00 +0000

Have you ever asked someone for directions, only to learn after following their instructions that they were wrong? It's awful. Why didn't that person just tell you they didn't know in the first place? Or maybe they thought they knew but they were simply mistaken? Either way, you're worse off that if that person had simply said: "I don't know".

Applications, websites, reports and user interfaces are the same way, and often times exist solely so that you can more clearly present certain information to someone. If the information you're presenting is wrong though, what's the point? You've actually done more harm than good.

People working in technology sometimes forget this simple truth - that bad information is far worse than no information at all. If you're getting so caught up in the functionality of something, so eager to see it "work", that you're neglecting the actual information being presented, you're doomed to failure.

We're working on an application right now and have decided that in order for it to guarantee a positive user experience, the GPS must be turned on and a coordinate must be retrieved. Could we use cell tower triangulation? Sure, we could. But that also means that a lot of people would be given incorrect information. The application would technically work but we'd be doing our users a huge disservice. Sometimes the best answer is "Sorry, I can't help you right now"

No amount of fancy design or awesome functionality can cover up the stink of bad information.

Are you certain that what you're presenting to your users is correct? If you're not, you have problems with the very foundation of your application.

Patience is Expensive

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:36:00 +0000

In our personal lives, I think the old adage is true - patience really is a virtue. Having patience with your friends, spouse, and children is a way to strengthen the foundation of your most important relationships. There's not really any cost, the rewards are great, and there is very little (if any) risk.

In business though, patience can be very costly. It's not a virtue, it's an expense. This doesn't mean it's never worth the cost - but a lot of times it isn't.

If your revenues are declining, you probably need more action than patience. If a project is running off the rails, it needs a project manager that's going to fix it immediately, not someone that's going to be patient and "let the process sort things out." If someone wants to start their own business, too much patience might be what's holding them back.

The exact definition of patience is: "the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset." Of course, getting angry or upset doesn't necessarily mean showing that you are angry or upset.

My point is, if you're able to accept "delay, trouble or suffering without getting angry or upset" you are, at a minimum, paying a price for that patience.

It takes practice

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:35:00 +0000

What is "it"? Well....it's anything. There's simply nothing you can expect to be good at without a lot of practice. This holds true in sports, acting, music, writing, and yes - also in business. The difference is that in business we're often not given (or giving) the opportunity to "practice" - everyone is always competing.

This is a huge problem.

Practice is where you get to make mistakes. Practice is where you push yourself to limits you're not quite sure you can handle. Practice is sometimes successful only when you identify the point where you fail. I'm a huge believer in the theory that we learn more from success than we learn from failure. But I also believe that no one becomes successful without a lot of practice and that sometimes the best practice sessions are filled with mistakes. The key is to keep the mistakes small, contained and to learn from them.

I was a springboard diver from about the age of 7 and continued all the way through my senior year at the University of Iowa. The amount of practice time compared to actual competition time was astronomical. We would practice 6 days a week and 4 hours per day, but we would only have competitions once every couple weeks. When we competed though, we were ready and in top form - because we practiced so much.

In the world of business, this practice to competition ratio is completely flipped.

Rarely are developers, project managers, designers, marketers and a host of others given the opportunity to practice. People are expected to perform at "competition" levels without ever being given the opportunity to push themselves to their professional limits. The result is one of two things: When mistakes are made they're huge with tremendous impact, or talented people find themselves in positions well below their abilities and ultimately become bored from the lack of stimulation.

The other thing that's required to make practice effective though is coaching. Unfortunately, this is something that a lot of managers are either unwilling or unable to do for their people and it's a real shame. Coaching takes knowledge, skill, time, patience and effective communication. How many managers do you know that possess all of what's needed to provide proper coaching? Is it any wonder then that people aren't given the opportunity to practice?

The combination of constant competition along with a managers' inability to coach virtually guarantees most employees aren't going to get practice time. The opening here is for those of us who can coach, and are willing to let our employees push themselves to their limits. We need to recognize that if we've hired people with talent, then we owe it to them to give them practice time.

This means giving them more responsibility than others might be willing to give them. It means knowing ahead of time that some mistakes will be made and being okay with it. Most importantly though, it means being able to take the time to coach them.

How much practice time are you getting? How much coaching are you providing? The answers are more important than most people realize.

Don't define yourself by your liabilities

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:55:00 +0000

When I started Ideal Project Group back at the end of 2006, I received what is probably some of the best business advice I have ever received - don't define yourself by your liabilities. I had (and still have) the good fortune of knowing Stephen Neish, CFO for Voxeo Corporation and he warned me that too often businesses believe it's their liabilities that make them legitimate. He explained that he had seen countless organizations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on everything from leather couches to flat screens to servers that could provide capacity they probably wouldn't need for years - all in an attempt to legitimize themselves.

Three years later, being more profitable than General Motors, Bank of America, Citibank and a host of other zombie corporations littering our economic landscape, I'm glad I listened to his advice and thought I should pass it along.

The reality is, profits are what make you legitimate.

If you're thinking of starting a business, or have one already, allow your profits and your assets to be your guiding light - not your liabilities. Thinking of starting a web development firm? Do you really need office space right now or can you work out of a public library with free Wi-Fi? Want to open a restaurant? Do you really need a score of $2,000 flat panels? Opening a boutique retail shop? Is it necessary to spend $20,000 or more on hardwood floors?

Now, during the course of identifying yourself by your profits and not your liabilities there will be those who attempt to diminish you and/or your company. Why? Because it's very easy for people to see your liabilities; it's not so easy for them to see your profits.

I cannot count the number of times someone has tried to belittle the company I am building. You just have to be willing to shrug it off keeping only one thing in mind - anyone that tries to diminish you or your business because you don't have more liabilities is almost certain never to have started their own company. It's also helpful to remember it's a lot easier to tell someone else how they should spend their money than it is to spend it yourself.

Don't define yourself by your liabilities. Good luck; and may your profits allow you to succeed.

Talent Problems Cannot be Solved with Process

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 02:53:00 +0000

Sometimes work doesn't get completed because it wasn't clear to the person who needed to do the work that they were responsible for the task at hand. Sometimes work is completed late because due dates were not communicated clearly. Other times, work isn't completed because something else suddenly took higher priority. In these instances, a new process may help prevent similar issues from occurring in the future. Keep in mind, a "process" in these examples may amount to nothing more than a simple list of priorities or it may be something more complex. None the less, they are issues that can be solved by providing greater clarity on priority, responsibility, and delivery dates.

Sometimes however, tasks aren't completed or priorities are mixed up because the person responsible for doing the work is simply not good at their job. No amount of process will turn a poor performer into a good performer. I could follow the same workout routine, eat the same food and wear the same shoes as Kobe Bryant. Guess what - I'm still going to be a crappy basketball player. I simply don't have the talent that he has.

To take the sports analogy a bit further, look at how often teams change their players. Even dynasties that keep the same core athletes still identify ways to make their teams stronger, and this often involves getting rid of athletes that aren't performing.

Now, I'm not suggesting that companies should be going around looking for people to fire. What I am saying though is that before implementing new processes and procedures, you should make sure that you're not trying to address a talent problem.

If you truly have issues with clarity, prioritization and ownership then a little more process may be exactly what you need - no matter how lightweight it may be. If however you're trying to correct someone's performance by adding more process, don't do it because it won't work.

The Importance of Momentum

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:30:00 +0000

Gaining and keeping momentum on a project is a critical component of it's success. In the same way that a car requires a lot of energy to initially get going, projects generally require an initial burst of energy. Once this is applied though, if you can maintain your momentum a much smaller amount of energy is required to keep moving at the speed to which you initially accelerated.

Likewise, once you've lost your momentum, it takes a pretty large amount of energy just to get things moving at the same pace again. It's not just inconvenient, starting and stopping on a project quite simply wastes a lot of energy. People need reminding as to what the priorities are. Team members become engaged on other initiatives. Vendors may think you're not serious about working with them. Employees question the importance of the project. The list goes on and on. In fact, I would argue that not starting a project is much better than starting a project that constantly loses it's momentum.

When I was in college I waited tables, and the worst shift was always Sunday evenings. Service was bad, mistakes would be made in the kitchen, the host or hostess would be MIA, etc. Why? Because Sunday night was by far the slowest time of the week; we would never get any momentum going for the evening. When a customer would come in we'd be annoyed that we couldn't keep joking around in the kitchen. We'd be eager to have our "shift beer" and no one was making much money that night anyway. In contrast, on a Saturday night when we were busy, things would be humming along smoothly.

It's the same situation with projects. No one wants to work on a something that seems like it's on life support. People like working on fun, active, fast-paced projects where tasks are regularly being completed. It turns out that these are also the easiest to manage because they have a ton of momentum - they only require a little bit of energy to keep things moving quickly. You may need to steer one way or the other and slow down or speed up in different situtions, but relative to starting from a near stand-still it's a negligible amount of energy.

Momentum is very real, and losing it on your projects can have far reaching ripple affects which are almost never good.

The hidden cost of corporate politics and the benefits of confrontation

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 01:27:00 +0000

Corporate politics and the people who engage in them account for an extraordinary amount of waste, in terms of both time and money. We've been so wired to avoid confrontation, that issues fester for weeks, months, and often times even longer. Instead of addressing problems head on, and rewarding those who demand that they be resolved, passive aggressiveness takes over and relationships become permanently tainted.

Instead of having open debate, disputes are resolved by the person who can more effectively bend the ear of an executive over lunch. Instead of making someone justify a position against available evidence to the contrary, people who bring forth the evidence are encouraged to wait for something to "blow up".

It can be a funny place, the corporate world, where one is judged not only on the basis of their performance, but also their ability to control other people's perception of their performance. It's a world where the way someone reacts to a bone-headed decision becomes more important than the original problem itself.

It seems sometimes that in the corporate world you get all the bad things from politics, and none of the good. You get the ear bending, schmoozing, jockeying for position, and behind closed doors rule making. But you don't get Freedom of Information, an appeals process, open debates, challenges to authority, or any of the other stuff that makes politics fun.

What I'm driving at here though is that all of this has a cost, and it's huge. When the corporate politicians are running around, sales aren't getting closed. Software isn't being built. Automation of manual processes isn't happening. New products aren't being introduced.

The problem is, the cost rarely affects the people playing this "game" - at least not immediately. In fact, they're often times rewarded if they play the game well. The reward might come in the form of a promotion, a raise, or maybe even just a little more credibility the next time a similar issue rolls around.

But if they're not paying the cost, then who is? The people signing their checks, that's who. It's the shareholders, or the entrepreneur, or maybe even their fellow colleagues who aren't going to get a bonus because everyone wanted to avoid getting into an argument or being perceived as a trouble maker.

Confrontation isn't comfortable, and it isn't always the answer either. Sometimes though, a little confrontation is all you need to figure out who's stopping you and your company from being its best; you would be wise to encourage it every now and then.

Moving at the speed of small

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:11:00 +0000

One of the best things about being a small business is that you get to move at lightning speed relative to large organizations. This is especially true when you're working with another small company to get something done. To illustrate the point, here is a time-line of events for a project we're working on. Keep in mind part of this happened over Labor Day weekend.

Friday 9/4 - 12:50pm: Job Post is placed on the 37Signals job board.
Saturday 9/5 - 9:32am Application received from qualified developer along with sample applications.
2:00pm - Non-Disclosure Agreement sent to Contract developer
6:00pm - NDA electronically signed.
9:37pm - Basecamp Project Space shared with developer
Sunday 9/6 - Developer reviews project space. I review applications developer has built to date.
Monday 9/7 - 10:55am - Quick chat in campfire about project question(s)
Tuesday 9/8 - 8:30am - Initial proposal received from developer
10:00am - Quick call to discuss a couple points of clarification on application architecture/design. (This is our first verbal communication)
5:41pm - Contract and SOW sent to developer
Wednesday 9/9 - 4:52pm - Contract fully executed by both parties.
Monday 9/14 - Development scheduled to begin.

Calendar days from job post to contract signing: 5 (2 business days)
Calendar days from job post to work starting: 10 (4 business days)

I've seen it take longer than 10 days just to get the language for a job posting put together. It takes reminding sometimes, but those of us who run small companies shouldn't be ashamed of our size. We should use it to our advantage.

By the way, I am officially at the point where I have no clue how I would run my business without the products by 37Signals.

The app is coming!

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:40:00 +0000

We're really happy to announce the launch of the site for the app we're working on. Check it out!

Make it easy for people to work with you

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:28:00 +0000

When trying to find a vendor or partner for a project, I always pay special attention to the way a company communicates and engages with me during the initial rounds of communication. These first interactions give you an excellent view into what it would be like working with another party, and tell you a lot about a company.

If someone gives you a completely one sided Non Disclosure Agreement where you have to sign away any idea you ever come up with just to talk to them about a project, they're telling you that they don't care about being reasonable and fair. If you have to wait 5 days for the legal department to approve a change to one line of a contract, don't expect to be able to move very quickly once you're working on a project with them. If a proposal doesn't clearly communicate services and the cost of those services, the entire engagement will be a mess. If someone requires you to use a fax machine for anything, don't expect them to be open to new technologies.

Contract negotiations, responses to proposal requests, and initial interactions tell you what it will be like working with someone in the best of circumstances. If you're easy to work with from the start, people will be much more likely to choose to continue working with you. Why this simple concept seems to escape so many is beyond me.

Take for example what I do now with my Non-Disclosures. Any time I need someone to sign an NDA, they get a link to my website where the NDA resides which they can electronically sign if they're comfortable with it. In addition, they get a link to the same exact NDA that's available on a writeboard, a wonderfully elegant and simple product from the folks at 37Signals that provides an easy and quick way to collaborate with others.

They get this other link before they even ask for any changes to be made. Why? Because I recognize that there may be something in my NDA that inadvertently makes another party feel uncomfortable, or that they think is unfair. I don't want them to feel bad about asking for a change to it, and I want them to know from the start that I'm open to collaboration and easy to work with. Just making this usually annoying process a bit simpler helps to show others what it will be like to work with my organization on their projects.

Compare this with someone who asks you to print a PDF, mark up the changes with a pen, fax them the changes, wait a few days for legal to review at which point they re-send a new PDF, ask you to print it, sign it, and then fax it back. Who would you rather work with? Who's going to be easier to collaborate with?

Initial communications say a lot about your company. In everything you do, make it easy for people to work with you.

I wanted to make something

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:25:00 +0000

That is the answer to why I decided Ideal Project Group should have an internal project and develop a product of our own. Now, this is a small step in a slightly different direction than I had originally anticipated; that I would focus solely on providing project management. In fact, the home page of my website says this:

Because we focus exclusively on Project Management, our incentives are exactly aligned with yours. We’re not trying to up-sell you on consulting, market analysis, or any other business services. Our only goal, and the only reason we’re in business, is to successfully manage your projects and deliver the desired results.

Then, in the "About" Section of my website, I say this:

Ideal Project Group LLC specializes in, and our only business is, Project Management. We do not and will not employ developers, business consultants, or any other myriad of professional services. Our only business is your projects.

The point in these statements was that I wouldn't be trying to up-sell customers an additional service. That Ideal Project Group could always be counted on to provide unbiased opinion and consultation, and that we wouldn't benefit by employing others on a project we were managing, ultimately creating a "moral hazard". This is still the case.

I haven't fundamentally altered the strategy of my business, (though I will be updating my website) I just had an idea I'd like to pursue. Of course, there are additional benefits of building our own product as well. First, it will be fun to work on a project in exactly the way I prefer. For example, not caring where a designer or developer works from. If I happen to have the good fortune of finding the right person in the same city I live in, then that's great and it would be wonderful to spend a little time with them now and then. But limiting the entire talent pool in all of the world down to a single city? That seems like a bad business decision.

It also provides me with something that I can share with and show to the rest of the world. The nature of the business is that NDA's are signed and a lot of the project specifics of what I work on are considered proprietary/confidential information. Building our own app helps build towards a meaningful public portfolio that I can openly share and discuss. In this regard, just building the application is a win for my business.

Lastly, and probably most importantly, it engages Theresa on a fun, interesting project right away that is extremely important to my company. When is the last time you felt like you were working on something important for your employer? If it's been a while, that's a bad sign. Working on this app also adds to her experience and ultimately allows her to grow into a position with my company where she's taking on more complex client projects. Here again, the core business of Ideal Project Group benefits from the development of this application.

It would certainly be nice if we ended up making a little money as well, but it's a fortunate situation to be in where just completing the first version of the application instantly helps the part of my business that's ultimately funding its development.

Welcome....Theresa Valdez

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:46:00 +0000

Today was a big day for Ideal Project Group. I hired my first employee, Theresa Valdez, about two weeks ago and today marked day number one. Theresa and I have worked together in the past so there are none of the worries/concerns/jitters that would normally come with a new employee. This is perfect because quite frankly, I can't afford to screw up my first hire.

Theresa joins Ideal Project Group as a Project Coordinator and will be making an immediate impact. Working on everything from growing the business by focusing on some new key areas, to assisting with a couple projects that I'm working on, Theresa is starting not a minute too soon.

Most notably, Theresa will be the Project Manager for our first internal software project - running everything from start to finish. We'll be posting more about the application that we're working on later, but I'm pretty excited about it and there's no one I'd rather have working next to me.

With a technology heavy background, Theresa brings Project Management, Business Analysis, Technical Writing and QA experience to Ideal Project Group. More important than her experience though is the speed and quality with which she accomplishes her work. I'm very excited to bring Theresa into this tiny family and can't wait to see what she accomplishes.

Theresa will be based in LasVegas, NV where she currently resides.

Talent is Far More Important than Experience

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 05:55:00 +0000

It absolutely amazes me that so many organizations focus on how much experience a person has when considering who to hire. Look at any job posting, and you can be assured it will clearly call out how much experience the job poster thinks a person should have for a particular role. What won't you see? Anything mentioned about talent.

In the most absurd cases, talented people are passed up for internal promotions in favor of less talented people with more experience. Why does this happen? Who knows for sure, but I suspect a lot of it has to do with a hiring manager being unable or unwilling to do battle with their superiors, or possibly the HR department, over who they can hire. It's too bad too, because these are exactly the people that can a great company.

Let's say you're hiring a Customer Service Manager, or an Operations Manager or a Project Manager. Does it really matter if they have 10 years of experience instead of 5? Sure, it would be ideal to get an extremely talented person who also had a ton of experience. But why put experience up front? Why make it a litmus test for whether someone gets past whatever your initial screening process is? Experience is great, but it's by no means a substitute for talent.

When someone says: "I want a person with at least 10 to 15 years worth of experience for this role", what they really mean is, "I'm assuming that someone with 10 to 15 years of experience is going to have the skill and talent required to be successful." That may be the case; but it might also be that they're nothing more than good corporate politicians.

Businesses need to operate like sports teams in this regard. Sports teams scout based on talent first, and experience second. They look at past performance, speed, agility, and whatever else they're interested in. The experience that a player brings to the table is certainly beneficial, but it's talent the gets the player through the door. Let's say it another way; How many 60 year olds have been playing golf longer than Tiger Woods? That may be an extreme example, but you get the point.

When you're looking to hire someone, talent comes first.

How to Start a Business in Chicago

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:48:00 +0000

Since starting Ideal Project Group in 2006, numerous people have asked me what steps you need to take in order to open a business in Chicago. When I first looked into creating the company, I recall being appalled at how many different sites I had to visit just to make sure I was doing everything correctly. In addition, it was pretty difficult just to determine the order of the steps I had to take. The disclaimer to this post is that I'm not an attorney, this isn't legal advice, and it's your responsibility to make sure you've done everything correctly. This being said, everything below outlines what was done to create Ideal Project Group, LLC. I hope you find this information helpful, and if you happen open a business I wish you the best of luck.

Step One

First, go to the Secretary of State's website to make sure the name you want to use isn't taken. Once you've come up with a name, register your business by filling out the online application. (Note, this is the LLC application, but you can browse the site for other corp. types that you can set up.) You can do all this online, and it costs a whopping $600 - ouch. Do this step first because you don't need a federal ID to register your business, but you do need your business name, which will be required when you go to get your FEIN.

Step Two

Get a Federal Employer ID (FEIN) from the US government. This is essentially a SS# for a business. Hooray, you are now a small business - one little piece in the backbone of the American economy.

Step Three

Now that you're a business, you'll need to register with the state of Illinois. This is also to give you a license at some point so depending on your business type you may want to wait until you've secured a business location. In addition, this will give you your Illinois Business Tax ID - so the govt can collect sales tax. This is used if, for example, you're a retailer. If you don't collect sales tax you'll likely never use this number except for when you get your license from the City of Chicago.

Step Four

To do business in the city of Chicago you need to get a City of Chicago Business License. For this one, you need to have your Illinois Business Tax ID which we just covered in Step Three. Also, you may need to have a location so the city can okay the business you're going to start in the location you want to start it. The form for this can be found here, and it also contains many of the links I provided above.

You have to actually go down to city hall to get the license, but it's not that big of a deal. In fact, I recall being surprised at how efficiently the place was run. On top of that, you'll meet a bunch of other people starting their own business, and the process of actually going to City Hall, applying for the license, and seeing other entrepreneurs was pretty inspirational. This of course is after you get over the fact that in America you need a license from the government just to start a business. But, let's not get into that now.

Step Five

If/When you hire employees, you'll also need to register with the Illinois Unemployment Insurance Agency. They'll calculate the percentage of your employee's salaries that you need to pay for unemployment insurance.

That's it. The first two steps are the most important because once that's done you can go to the bank and open a checking and savings account and a credit card in your company name. Then you can start buying stuff under your new company name!

Step Six

Get to work!

I hope you found this helpful, and for those of you that are starting a business, I wish you the best of luck.

Better Late than Never

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:24:00 +0000

I've been wanting to start this blog for a while, and frankly I have no excuse as to why it took me so long. After all, I've created a number of blogs before and this layout took me all of 10 minutes to put together using blogger; not to mention that I've been in business for almost three years.

Better late than never I suppose, and at long last I finally have my blog about Project Management. I intend to write relatively often, though I make no commitments as to how often I'll be posting. I'm not going to limit myself solely to Project Management, but also plan to provide plenty of opinion about business in general and entrepreneurship in particular.

I also plan to re-work the Ideal Project Group main site a bit, at least in terms of the content, to more accurately reflect how my views on Project Management have evolved over the past few years. My core beliefs haven't changed much at all actually, but what has changed is my perception of how those beliefs should be communicated to the outside world. In short, I think I "corporatized" my message and I need to undo this.

Lastly, I've been feeling lately like I'm taking a hell of a lot more than I've been giving. Numerous people have helped influence my understanding of the web, technology, business and a host of other things, but I haven't been paying any of that back. This needs to change and I intend for this blog to be a vehicle for these contributions.

I'll link to the blog from the main site shortly, once I finalize a few design and content decisions. In the meantime, thanks for stopping by.

Project Idealism

You control your calendar

Yes, no, or not yes?

Tools Matter

Advice for recruiters

Out of order

Introducing Notifire.me

Remembering Cameron

Podcast Episode Seven - What can a project manager learn from an author?

We're all to blame

A little consolidation, some new services, and a redesign

The high dive

Seth Godin is coming to Chicago

Finding comfort in contradiction

Introducing ThirtyDayProject.org

Airplane mode

Why companies shouldn't pay contractors hourly

* = Not really

First impressions or lasting impressions?

Thirty ideas down, thirty days to go.

We're always the hardest on ourselves

Podcast Episode Six - What can a project manager learn from programming?

Hanging by a thread

Self Censorship

Casual Friday is a form of mind control

Twitter is for listening

"I can't do it"

The brain and the heart are equally vital

The language barrier is crumbling

Determination

The difference between teaching and coaching

The first followers

Dancers need music

Podcast Episode Five - What can a project manager learn from a chef?

Dance Party

New Look

Podcast Episode 4 - Announcing Version One for Everyone

Complicated software allows people to control information

Don't spend time quantifying the obvious

Thoughts on the iPad

Short term planning does not mean short term thinking

You are a genius.

Duarlander Update

New year, new direction, new website

Time is not money

Working like it's 1999

Government Idiocy and how not to manage a project

Podcast Episode Three - What can a project manager learn from the director of human rights projects?

Let's try this again shall we?

Understanding your place on Rogers' bell curve

A year of inspiration, action, tragedy, fear, hope, and love

Unnatural Search

Top posts of 2009

Watching the death of the movie industry

Thank you for the gifts!

Who gets to define success?

Podcast Episode Two - What can a project manager learn from an artist?

Don't talk through the mouth of someone else

iTunes Podcast Link

Podcast Episode One - An Introduction

Birds and Monkeys

You should use Squidoo

No one can have your perspective

On Fear

Happy Reflection Day

In order to win, you must be willing to lose

Naiveté is an asset

Investing in yourself

Get Unconfused

The Birth of a New Company

Lessons from a birthday party

GoFind! has been released

Art by a three year old

When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority

No information is better than bad information

Patience is Expensive

It takes practice

Don't define yourself by your liabilities

Talent Problems Cannot be Solved with Process

The Importance of Momentum