Customer Reviews

The Project 50 (Reinventing Work): Fifty Ways to Transform Every "Task" into a Project That Matters!

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4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Tom Peters is an ex-McKinsey & Co. consultant, who become a management guru by being the co-author of business super-bestseller 'In Search of Excellence' (1982). He has written several books after that huge success, but nothing has come close in quality. This (little) book is part of his 'Reinventing Work' series.

The aim of this book is to make us "believe that work can be cool. That the work matters." The reason? "Work - yours and mine - as we know it today will be reinvented in the next ten years." Perhaps you believe this, but I do not. Yes, we can make work and, in this case, projects more interesting. Tom Peters comes up with a list of 50 ways how to do this. The list is split up in four parts: (1) Create; (2) Sell; (3) Implement; and (4) Exit. Each of the 50 ways raised consists of a short introduction, the main point ("the nub"), the impact, and some examples and quotes. Most of the 50 ways are quite interesting, but they could have been cut down to some 25.

I always feel disappointed when I have to write a negative review, but this time I have no choice. Tom Peters is a famous management guru and an excellent motivational speaker. I feel that he tries to bring his famous energy from his seminars across by using plenty of capitals, wild colors, abbreviations, and exclamation marks. But it just does not work (for me). There are some interesting points, but he would have been better by producing a video of his seminars or writing a proper book - like 'In Search of Excellence' (1982) - on projects. For people interested in projects and project management there is plenty of choice elsewhere. Although the book is small and consists of only 200 pages, the book is not that simple to read due to its format and structure.

As a multimedia software writer/producer, I thought my projects were pretty hot stuff. That might be true, but reading "The Project 50" sent me on a quest for the fabled "way cool" moniker for every project I do.

In this practical and outrageously optimistic book, Peters makes a clarion call for work that matters, that takes your breath away--that, in short, WOWs not only your clients/customers but everyone who sees what you do.

With 50 suggestions (each with a number of action items) for creating WOW projects, Peters stirs a divine dissatisfaction for business-as-usual. "Good enough" work no longer is--and will soon be the death knell of its practitioners.

With characteristic bullets, colors, UPPER CASE PHRASES, and underlines, Peters confronts us with the challenge of the near-future: Making the most of the new millennium will require nothing else than producing WOW projects--whether they be spread sheets or theme parks.

This book reinvigorated me and recast my vision for the future--so much so that I bought copies for my fellow writer/producers. Read it and you'll see why.

WOW! Buy it. Read it, no ABSORB it. But put it to work BEFORE you finish the book. So many parts of this book struck a cord. I took rapid prototyping to heart and used existing tools to completely revamp a process. Project Time - 2 1/2 hours, time savings - 2 hours per day x 3 employees! Approval and buy in took a week. (Our normal process would have taken months). If you try to read this and then put the principals in practice you will be overwhelmed. Practice as you go along. Tom is cutting straight to the meat with his "50" series books. You NEED these books.

When you learn to use this little book you can turn nasty little jobs into opportunities that are rewarding. Sounds like the same old words but it sure doesn't feel like "the same old" when you get it to work the first few times. It MAGIC and it makes your project fun, manageable, and they are all set up for further correction and deeper development.
I used to hate making some business telephone calls and after I defined the project and found the WOW in it, it became O.K and then went on to be one of my strengths and I'm making friends on the telephone now and have doubeled my income. This is powerful and Tom Peters is to big a part of our business evolution to not have as a traveling companion as we become more and more part of the global brain.

This book is the Pilgrim's Progress for those who head up projects (which will be more and more people as organizations downsize and outsource). I liked the way that Tom Peters shows that everyone can make every project meaningful and a valuable, worthwhile contribution. This is a wonderful gift, and one that all can benefit from. Tom, when you redo this book (and with your theory of fast prototyping, I assume that this will come out next month), I think you missed a big opportunity -- helping people pick the project to work on that will make the most difference. If you subscribe to the 80/20 rule, then 20 percent of the projects will make 80 percent of the difference. By picking the right areas to work on, you can multiply your influence by more than 20 times than if you pick the low-potential areas. That is like getting to live 20 times over in one lifetime. Wow! I agree that high potential projects often come disguised as unimportant ones. A good companion book for this one is The Fifth Discipline, to help you understand systems thinking so that you can pick the areas to work on that will influence everything else. The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook and the Dance of Change also have very valuable ideas for running projects. Having spent my working career running projects, I especially subscribe to his notion that projects should have a stealthy beginning, so that you can have the freedom to create what is really needed. Too much publicity and money too soon are killers. I found the advice to closely parallel my own experiences and those of best practice cases that I study. This is a very valuable book for anyone who wants to make a difference. I also recommend the other two books in the series, Brand You 50 and Professional Service Firm 50. Thanks for sending copies to me, Tom Peters!

As usual, Tom Peters takes an irreverant approach to normal,mundane things like business projects. You're nominated to clean upafter the big party? No sweat--turn it into a redecorating process, or team-building exercise. Great thoughts about reframing everyday, normal business projects into something that can be resumed!

I've read the first book in the series "Brand You" and am starting "Professional Service Firms" because I like the way Tom Peters thinks and presents his material. However, this book, "The Project" has the same Peters quality--but his 50-List could have been shrunk to 20--it seemed as though he was just trying to meet the 50-List title in the book series. His material focuses on the small project--you take it on--and you are still taking on a thread of of the organizations DNA/culture. I would still buy the book--it will just be a quick read for you.

I'll start by saying I'm not a huge Tom Peters fan. I've read most of his books and he's helped my career alot, but he's just kinda weird.

This book is by far, imo, his best. It's timely and relevant and has tons and tons of useful information. In fact, it should be a blueprint of the way to work with projects.

Tom Peters explains how to develop "Wow!" projects - projects that are significant, revolutionary, exciting and dramatic. He claims that all companies are going in the direction of using projects as their fundamental work unit. The key to success is knowing how to create, sell and implement your projects and then how to exit to your next project. The book is devoted to these four steps. Peters offers 50 key tips on how to develop and launch these projects. This idea-packed, easy-to-read book is written in breezy, short, to-the-point sentences. Peters often uses the "!", which he has adopted as his symbol. His jazzy style underlines his message: Throw aside traditional thinking and accept the new. This approach also makes this book, like his other recent books written in this style, fun to read, although the information he presents is quite serious and powerful. We [...] highly recommend this book to everyone in business - from clerks to top executives.

We are in the age of manufactured enthusiasm. How anyone can imagine that regular work in a business should be stimulating to the point of being really really cool is simply beyond me. Yet year in and year out, Tom Peters (and an immense cohort of lesser talents) continue to tell us that yes, work can be fun and cool, etc etc. And he continues to make the really really big bucks doing so.

Either Peters is onto something, or we are all fools for treating him like he is. What I believe is that he has inserted himself into business speak as one of our principal formulators of vocabulary to dress up our normal drudgery as something more than it is.

Peters pumps businessmen up, flatters their vanities, and sends them back to the real work with a new vocabulary of "change agents," "WoW projects," and innumerable other expressions of similar banality. He tells them that what they are doing is significant and interesting, and that they can make every project into a fantiastical thing that will change the workd as well as enhance their careers. This boggles the mind, particularly if you have read it more than once in such puffed up venues as Fast Company and Wired, which I believe bring the the profession of journalism to the crudest boosterism, akin to the promoters of primitive Western cities in the 19C America.

In Project 50, Peters offers "fifty ways to transform every `task' into a project that matters." They range from "reframing" the task as it was posed (make it revolutionary) to selling it succinctly ("metaphor time!") to implementing it ("celebrate failure"!! as a learning experince and as a useful exercise of thinking "crazy") to Exiting ("Seed your freaks into the mainstream"!). If this does not want to make you vomit, try reading it straight through. Doesn't it make you cringe?

And yet.

In my education work with managers whom I sincerely admire and who are undoubtedly highly intelligent and savvy, they gobble this stuff up and use it. While they disdain much of the ridiulous in Peters' vocabulary (the "nub", etc.), they find it profitable to discuss these ideas and it inspires them to change. Thus, I must conclude that there is something is all this hype, something useful that gets pulled out and applied. I just wish that it didn't seem so trivial and silly, so over the top for people who consider themselves writers. I saw a group of extremely bright people wave this book like it was Mao's Red Book durin the cultural revolution. It was stupefying.

So I must say: this book is useful. I make money from it too. And it changes behavior, at least in the activities that I have seen as an education professional. Thus, I must recommend it with a grain of salt. Don't get carried away, but don't have too closed a mind either.