Daniel O'Neil

The 7 Steps to Great Projects E-Book

I received a series of great comments on the Linkedin group Chief of Party Exchange to my earlier post Notes to a Newly Appointed Project Director. I reworked the earlier blog post into a free ebook: 7 Steps to Starting a Great Project. It is a six-page essay that focuses on the first seven things that a newly appointed project director should do to ensure that his or her project starts off right and hopefully ends well. It also includes short reviews of six books that every Project Director should read. What do you think? What would include in an expanded version?

Are you a Leader or a Manager?

Exclusive interview with Seth Godin from GiANT Impact on Vimeo for the Chick-Fil-A Leadercast.

There is practical, everyday management. I am not interested in that. Leadership is not practical and it is not everyday. Management and Leadership are totally different things. You think that you are being a leader, but you are probably being a manager. Seth's opening words in the video.

I love how blunt Seth is. We all aspire to be leaders, but leadership is scary. Management is following the rules--good accounting, completing the activities in the log framework, writing complete reports. A good manager can squeeze a bit more impact from a project. Management is safe--we know what we need to do and how to measure our success.

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. Peter Drucker, and Warren Bennis, as quoted in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) by Stephen R. Covey, p. 101

The challenge with leadership is that you have to be in front. If the path was known, then a leader would not be needed. I know that I am leading when I can feel the pressure. When a coworker says, "You can't do that.", but I know that I can and think that I will succeed. When I am 100% sure of myself, I am managing. When I am pushing in a new direction and pretty sure that it will work (even if though I will act 100% sure), then I know that I am pushing the envelope.

 

Steve Farber tells this beautifully in his free audio series (available through this website) and less well in this video (skip the first seven minutes of selling--the core content start after this introduction). His point is that if you are not scared, if you are not experiencing an OS!M, you are not pushing yourself--you are not really leading.

And this is the challenge. Leading is hard work. It is scary. It is the only way to make a difference. To paraphrase the subtitle of Seth's book Tribes, Lead, because we need you to lead us. So what do you want to do, Manage or Lead?