I know - the name seems crazy, but the thinking behind it is fascinating - and useful!
Seth Godin, for me, is one of the most innovative and orginal thinkers of our time.
In one of his latest blog posts, he wrote about how, during the implementation of new projects (read 'change'), you can have the right strategy, tactics and execution ... but still not reach your desired destination.
Mind you, when things go wrong, this is all most human beings would consider looking at to see where the 'fault' lay.
But Seth tells us there are 4 more areas which, if not robust and clearly evident, can cause the downfall of many great initiatives. And these are the areas that are not typically considered to be pertinent to a project's success.
1. The reputation of the people, team and organisation who are working on the project
2. The persistence of the team
3. The desire of the team to succeed
4. The team's underlying fears
Seth suggests that if a project isn't going according to plan, it is typically due to one or more of these elements not being right. (Actually, he says in his experience, it's normally all of them.)
Really great food for thought ... what are you looking at when things are going off the rails in your organisation?
Maylene Sutherland says:
16-October-2012 at 11:53 am
That's a really interesting train of thought. I've just been successful in running a project and there were so many things in theory that should have made it fall over. Such as time frames that under normal circumstances just wouldn’t allow things to get up, no money, no project plan in the beginning, suspicion around the product (as in it was a new concept in the organisation) and we started with the germ of an idea and nothing more. Also our group was made up of people who were relatively unknown within our organisation – so that goes towards not having a reputation. However, we certainly all had persistence, desire and no fear (that I was aware of) and we were successful. We have had a lot of fantastic feedback, and those in the ‘know’ think the program that we started is here to stay. I’ll be definitely taking Seth’s words away with me. Thanks for raising it Sandi!
Sandi says:
16-October-2012 at 12:08 pm
Great to hear of your project's success, Maylene - congrats! And thanks for sharing some of the details so we can all learn from this.
If you want to read Seth's entire post, it's at http://preview.tinyurl.com/95m9f4l
I recently attended a three-day women’s festival that I attended for the first time in 2016. It’s never the same the second, third or umpteenth time around is it? First of all, there’s that ‘first time newness’ that we can only get once. “Wow! Look at that!” “Goodness, that’s amazing!” And so on … because we are seeing things through fresh, first-time eyes.
In our subsequent visits, while we look for that same magic, but logically know it will be different than our beloved ‘first-time’. We then start to notice what’s not there that we liked the previous year(s), and lament “But I really liked that!”
So this year, I decided to focus instead on what was new, different and intriguing. And that’s how I came across The Release Tree.