(This article was originally published on www.svprojectmanagement.com)

A recipe alone doesn’t make cookies, but it’s a start. And great chefs don’t need a recipe book, but someone with the discipline to follow a recipe can cook like a great chef with discipline and a little practice. And the same is true for the recipe for family success. What is this common sense recipe that can enable any family to dramatically increase the odds of living a life tending more toward excellence and true happiness than survival? It’s a matter of dodging the predictable and avoidable pitfalls outlined in this series. Based on tried and true principles of project management, this approach has been proven to triple the chances of achieving success in the business world, and there’s no reason to believe this same benefit won’t be realized in your family. This series contains practical guidance for avoiding the “dirty dozen” pitfalls of the most important project of your life, your family. Don’t risk falling into these all too familiar traps! The guidelines are grouped into stages, and you should tackle each stage in this order to build a solid foundation for the next.

Stage 1 – Envisioning Your Family’s Fabulous Future

If you were having a dinner party you’d probably have a reason, even if it’s just to have an enjoyable night with friends, make a guest list, and think about the menu before starting to heat up the oven. As a result of your thoughtful preparations you’re more likely to have a successful party. But, unbelievable as it may seem, most people don’t spend as much time planning their lives as that dinner party!

Stage 2 – Planning for Your Family’s Success

Achieving success requires a plan, and most people avoid planning like the plague. But having a plan will more than double your chances of achieving your goals. Who’s going to do what, and by when? What are the risks, assumptions and beliefs inherent in our plan? Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of this process. It’s how the most successful companies in the world have amassed their enormous fortunes.

Stage 3 – Putting Your Plan Into Action

Plans are great fun, but without action it’s just a waste of a time. No need to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in a day, but by taking take a small step forward each day in the direction of your goals you’ll certainly be farther along than the family that just spends time perfecting their plan, or waiting for the perfect time for action.

Stage 4 – Living This Way Every Day

We become what we think about, and what we do every day. At some point this family project process isn’t something you do, it’s something you live. We need to integrate this kind of process into the fabric of our family.

EXERCISE, NOT READING, BUILDS MUSCLE! Get ready for tomorrow by imagining and dreaming about your ideal family future tonight!

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(This article was originally published on www.svprojectmanagement.com)

We are Family. Sure, but if you’re like most families, you use what I call the “random chaos” approach to life. In a splendid demonstration of hope triumphing over experience, two people embark on what could be a decades long adventure. They get married, have kids, survive raising ‘em, maybe buy a house to contain the mayhem, and finally eek out a bit of retirement before languishing in a dilapidated physical and financial state for their last less-than-enjoyable years on Earth. Looking back I’m sure many families wonder “Where did our lives go?”

Well, if I had to answer based on my decades in the corporate world, and a half-century of life experience, it went the way of all unplanned journeys: this-a-way and that, and often not much to show for it but a T-shirt that says “I Survived Such-and-Such”. Sadly, mere survival is the bar that most families are unconsciously aiming for when they live in such a haphazard way. Lacking a shared vision of their life as a family, without clear goals, and no real plan, each year just rolls into the next. Like Tarzan swinging vine to vine, they may swing from crisis to crisis, giving little thought to each one until it is upon them. Scant thought is given to preventing fires while embroiled in them.

The Nuclear Scenario

Consider a doom and gloom scenario for one such family. In love and eager to have the fairy tale wedding they’re been programmed to expect, a young couple goes into debt to fund what their parents can’t afford – an extravagant wedding that impresses their friends, but leaves them gasping for financial breath for the next couple of years. Somehow one kid turns into two or three, and the choice between working with the cost of childcare or having one parent stay home to take care of the kids leans more toward abandoning work in favor of childcare. Or parents stagger their work schedules, seeing their kids, but not much of each other, in order to hang on to the two incomes they desperately need to get by. Each year a few impulsive expenditures delivers a blow to their economic wellbeing, keeping them locked in the cycle of spend à debt à struggle to pay.

If they’re fortunate enough to dodge the bad luck bullets of accidents or health problems that can quickly incapacitate even a financially comfortable family, eventually the kids are college age. Without college savings, a scholarship, or loans, they opt for a community college and living at home to get started inexpensively. As these young adults watch their peers earn money, granted at jobs without much of a future, while they struggle to pay for college and continue to live with their parents, they’re tempted to let their dreams of a college education fade as they get caught up in their own cycle of survival. Some years down the road when they fall on hard times, or realize that they want something more from their lives, they end up back living with parents, who delay their retirement and take out a second mortgage on their paid-off house to help their kids, putting the quality of any eventual retirement for the parents in jeopardy. When these very same parents are in need of nursing home care they haven’t got the money to afford that either, and they slip into obscurity while their children are re-enacting a similar dismal journey in their own lives. Ug!

Of course the story of your family doesn’t have to be like this. Many families live a much more charmed existence, and there are several paths to a more enjoyable family future.

1. Luck
2. Planning
3. A combination of the two.

Naturally it’s ideal to have both, but relying on luck alone is the most treacherous. Dale Carnegie once said “Luck is when preparedness meets opportunity, and there is always opportunity.” If you’d like to reduce the chances that your family’s story will resemble in any way the morbid scenario described above, you need to do what does not come naturally to most human beings. You need to plan and prepare – plan for success and prepare for setbacks. This is something that every project manager does routinely, and every human being can benefit from.

Running Your Family Like a Project

Project management ends up being mostly a collection of what many call “common sense”, which you might have noticed is far from common knowledge, and certainly NOT common practice. People who make a career of leading and managing projects know that applying even a small dose of project management common sense can more than double the chances of achieving the project goals, and dramatically reduce the impact of predictable and avoidable pitfalls along the way. Project management has been around for decades, but many families don’t take advantage of this practical approach when figuring out how to get what they want. In fact that’s where the problems start – most families never take the time to consider what they want. They don’t think about the purpose of their family, never give a moment’s thought to defining their individual or shared family goals, and thus they’re headed down an all too familiar path of getting whatever random chance flings their way. But your family doesn’t need to live like this! You can start today to live a different way.

The secret to success isn’t secret. It’s well known, just like the secret to losing weight. While everyone knows how to lose weight, few people have the discipline to follow the straightforward advice “Eat less and exercise more.” Below I’ll share well-known “secrets” to getting what you want for yourself and your family. But you will need to add a large dose of discipline and commitment to follow this recipe in order to be successful. Rest assured that if you do you’ll greatly increase your chances of achieving your goals and dreams.

FAMILY PROJECT SERIES: Many people have asked me to adapt the advice in my top-selling project management book’s to use in daily life. This week we’ll explore how we can apply Scrappy Project Management practices to our families. Tune in tomorrow for more!

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(This article was originally published on www.svprojectmanagement.com)

This is the final post in my series exploring post-quake Japan.

While I’ve enjoyed many aspects of working with Japanese companies in recent years, one issue that’s been a frequent cause of consternation is what I perceive to be their relatively slow pace of change. OK, to be perfectly honest I’m not impressed with the speed of change in the corporate world in general, but in Japan I’ve sometimes experienced it as positively glacial. I feel this especially keenly when suggesting changes related to technology and tools that seem common place from my vantage point in Silicon Valley, California, a hotbed of innovation. Social systems like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn seem indispensable to daily life. Social media marketing and open innovation seem to me to be standard practice for successful businesses. And wearing casual clothing at work – well, what else WOULD we wear?!!

By comparison, business culture in Japan and elsewhere seems to change at a more leisurelly pace. (Today when over half of the Fortune 500 companies have a Facebook page, many people still view this tool as a toy for teenagers.) But an event like the triple tragedy experienced in Japan on March 11 this year can create an opening for rapid change. In pursuit of reduced electricity consumption, many businesses in Japan have adopted “cool biz” dress standards. Although Japanese businessmen won’t be coming to work in shorts, sandals and a T-shirt Silicon Valley style anytime soon, the ocean of dark suited men streaming through the streets of Shimbashi will include a higher percentage of people without neckties or jackets. Instead they’ll be sporting neatly pressed short sleeved shirts and business casual pants (most probably still within a narrow range of colors that men worldwide seem to prefer – white, black, brown, gray and blue).

The sense of urgency to reduce power consumption has also opened a door to more flexibility in work starting time, and more acceptance of working from home. These might seem like small shifts to those of us working in more flexible environments, but these are enormous changes for many Japanese businesses.

Maybe these changes are purely practical responses to the clear necessity of reducing power consumption, and perhaps they’ll change back once full power is available, but I don’t think so. In my opinion many people working in Japanese companies crave such changes, and it will be difficult to reverse the trend once people adapt to a new norm. The crisis is real, but it’s also a tremendous opportunity to rapidly shift culture and convention in a new direction. What was unacceptable – even unthinkable – in the past can now become “normal” – the “new normal” as some people in Tokyo are calling it. These rapid changes have inspired me to look for other opportunities that can be piggybacked on this wave of change.

One of my business mentors often encourages me to opportunistically align my own transformational change efforts with trends sweeping through an organization. He recommends such alignment as an excellent way to transform a corporate culture without the resistance and personal risk typically associated with championing change.

Perhaps this experience of rapid change in post-quake Japan will teach me the wisdom of surfing vs. thrashing my way to transformation. Maybe I can even learn ways to create rapid, widespread change without a disaster!

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(This article was originally published on www.svprojectmanagement.com)

Here’s another article in this series where I squeeze meaning out of seemingly purposeless tragedy.

When I landed in Tokyo 2 weeks ago – my first trip here since the quake – I wondered what signs of the recent disaster might be evident. As the bus made its way from the airport into town I strained to see if there were cracks in buildings or structures in shambles lining the highway. I expected to at least see a missing window or two, if not a pile of rubble here or there, as evidence of the recent 8.9 earthquake. After all, this quake was far more intense than the buildings of Tokyo were designed to endure. (After watching the videos of buildings in Tokyo waving like blades of grass in the wind, I’m of the opinion that their durability in the face of this enormous earthquake is one of the engineering miracles of this century.)

As much as I searched, as far as I could tell everything was exactly the same as the last 100 times I’d ridden this bus route. Except, that is, for the city lights. Tokyo was noticeably darker! For example, convenience stores were plenty bright inside, but their outside lights were completely turned off. The vending machines peppering the sidewalks were glowing dimly from a few LEDs still powered up, but their main lights were also dim, making them mere shadows of the thirst-quenching meccas that normally beckon to parched commuters. And the famous Rainbow Bridge that spans Tokyo Bay, dazzling onlookers by day and night, looked rather humble as a practical number of dim bulbs illuminated only the lower edge. And I can personally attest to the fact that even the toilet seat heaters had been turned off in many establishments.

I soon discovered that this enormous, thriving metropolis of tens of millions of people had managed to reduce their power consumption by 25% since the disaster, something that I imagine many people would have claimed was impossible, or at least unrealistic, prior to the quake. While this single-minded focus on power conservation has been prompted by necessity, I was still impressed that such dramatic reductions were possible without any significant reduction in the quality of life (aside from a chilly behind in the bathroom). It struck me that if 25% reduction was possible without noticeably eroding the quality of life, then far greater reductions should be within reach if human beings were willing to sacrifice a luxury or two. In that spirit I resolved to enormously reduce my power consumption during my visit.

First thing to go was heat and air conditioning in my hotel. Even when temperatures soared to summer-like highs, I just opened the window and let in the fresh air along with the noise of the city. I limited my lighting to just what my computer screen put out, except when I had to tackle the delicate task of putting on mascara – something I hesitate to disclose lest I dispel the illusion that I’m a natural beauty.

Perhaps you think my meager efforts to conserve a few milliwatts of power don’t mean much, but the noticeably darker streets of Tokyo were comforting assurance that I was not alone in my efforts. Knowing that millions of other people were consciously reducing their use of electricity encouraged me to do the same. The goal was simple and clear, and we all could be assured that our efforts were not in vain because the commitment to reduce power usage was strikingly visible everywhere.

That’s often the key to achieving what seems impossible in our projects, too. Clear, simple goals that everyone clearly knows how to support. True, a crisis brings with it a sense of urgency that change is required, but I’m determined to find ways to inspire widespread action without disaster.

I have a tendency to focus on making a big impact, but next time I’m working on a project where we need to achieve seemingly impossible results I’m going to remember that many small contributions can add up to surprisingly big cumulative results.

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(This article was originally published on www.svprojectmanagement.com)

In my continuing quest to make meaning out of tragedy, here’s another in the series.

It’s amazing to me how selfless some people can be when tragedy strikes. Several days following the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear nightmare in Japan I realized that I’d totally forgotten my brother’s birthday. My whole family is spread all over the US – Pittsburgh, Houston, Daytona and San Francisco. (I’m pretty sure it’s because there’s some kind of US law restricting the number of Wieflings that can live in a given area due to the cumulative scrappiness factor that results when we’re in close proximity.) Connecting on special occasions is one of the few ways we remind ourselves that we truly are a family, not rootless diaspora, so I phoned him up ready to make it up to him by sending him an unnecessarily extravagant gift. When I asked him what he’d like he said “Just do something nice for those people in Japan next time you go there.” I was so touched by his thoughtfulness that I nearly burst into tears. But my amazement was only to grow when I actually made my first post-quake trip to Japan in early May.

When I announced my plans to go back to Japan my family and friends asked “Are you really going?” as there’s been a mass exodus of foreigners from Japan since the disaster. Shortly after the nuclear power plant disaster one US citizen working in Tokyo wrote an email to their Japanese subordinates saying “If you need me I’ll be in Hawaii.” Needless to say that manager received a chilly reception upon their return.

As I’ve been working in Japan just about every month for the past 5 years I felt a responsibility to return. After all, my friends and colleagues are working here everyday. I usually staying at the same place when in Tokyo, so breakfast at the hotel the first day was a joyous reunion between me and the restaurant workers who’ve been so friendly to me over the years. Handing them a bottle of potassium iodide tablets (a strange gift perhaps, but it seemed the thing to do), I expressed my sympathy for the suffering they’d been enduring as a nation. Immediately following their “thank you” for my concern one woman said “We’re worried about the people in the US suffering from the tornadoes!”

My jaw dropped! With all they’ve been through recently, I couldn’t imagine that anyone in Japan would have a brain cell free to worry about the victims of tornadoes in the US. What an awesome reminder of selflessness and concern for others. All too frequently I’ve become lost in anguishing over my own situation while giving too little thought to the difficulties others are facing. This was an excellent reminder not to become consumed by my own problems when leading a project, but to keep the challenges my teammates are facing top-of-mind.

I truly hope I can live up to these fine examples in future projects.

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(This article was originally published on www.svprojectmanagement.com)

In my quest to make sense of the recent tragedy in Japan I’m writing about my experiences from Tokyo, where I’ve been working for the past 2 weeks.

When my phone rang in California at 4 AM on March 11 I knew it couldn’t be good news. My dad was calling from 3 time zones ahead to tell me that tragedy had struck Japan. (I travel to Japan on business pretty much every month, and have many friends and colleagues there.) What did my dad think I could do from my home in the San Francisco Bay Area? I really don’t know, but that’s how my family is. Wieflings just automatically assume there’s something we can do about any situation, no matter how overwhelming and intimidating it might be. That trait, which I firmly believe is passed on genetically – in our family anyhow – has been a great asset to me leading projects.

While there certainly are times when I’m tempted to allow myself to be lulled into a sense of complacency by thoughts of how powerless I am to make a positive difference in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, I’ve learned to resist that urge. Refusing to give up hope even when convinced of my own helplessness has often led to ideas that ultimately yielded beneficial results. Of course these ideas sometimes take hours or days to emerge, and frequently are born from lengthy dialogues with “thinking partners” who help untangle my thoughts and contribute their own. But eventually possibilities emerge if the mind insists on holding onto hope.

Feeling hopeless? There’s always something you can do to make a positive contribution, however tiny. Even a symbolic act that buoys the spirits of your teammates can be a welcome alternative to sitting helplessly by watching bad news unfold.

In the case of the recent earthquake, tsunami, nuclear power plant triple disaster, of course I donated money to the relief fund, but that didn’t seem nearly enough. Finally I hit on an idea of sending a symbol of my concern to my partners in Tokyo. I purchased a roll of Lifesaver candies for each person (in a nod to the nuclear aspect of the situation I chose the Wint-o-green flavor because they glow in the dark when you bite them), put a little heart sticker on each one, popped each roll into a little silk bag with an inspiring message, and shipped them off to Japan. (Naturally I worried that the box would take up precious cargo space required for disaster supplies, but I decided to proceed anyhow.)

It was a small gesture, meaningless in the grand scheme of things of course, but what isn’t?! Now that I’m in Japan for the first time since the tragedy many people have taken the time to tell me how much it meant to them to receive this little reminder of my concern for them.

What symbolic act could express your support for your team during tough times? A little gesture can mean a lot.

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(This article was originally published on www.svprojectmanagement.com)

This time of year in the US many people, including me and my family, celebrate Christmas. It’s the most important holiday for us, and it’s a time of year when people seem more tuned in to the connections among all human beings. It seems to me that people are a wee bit nicer to each other. We take time to be with our families, and we tell our friends how much they mean to us. As far as holidays go, it’s a very big deal. Because I’m traveling on business 2-3 weeks a month I’m typically arriving home in Silicon Valley, California, from Japan just in time to be jet lagged all through the holiday season. This year, however, my last week of work before Christmas was in Houston, Texas, so instead of being jet lagged I’m merely burnt out. Well, burnt to a crisp, actually – like a piece of bacon cooked in a greasy skillet on extra high heat for about an hour longer than normal. Toast!

Send holiday cards through snail mail? Not happening! Shopping for gifts? Only if they can be purchased at the local grocery store. But I am doing my share of socializing. I find myself caught up in the emotions of the season, and sometimes moved to tears by the warmth of these precious moments. I think deep thoughts like “Life is short.”, and I’ve felt a deeper level of compassion for the people around me – even the ones who get on my nerves. Part of the reason I’m feeling more compassionate towards others is – being burned out – I really need some compassion myself. For the past four months I’ve been traveling almost constantly, and working at an unsustainable pace. Although on the outside I look pretty much like a normal human being, inside I’m a worn out, frazzled blob of protoplasm whimpering ”Please be kind to me.” Definitely NOT feeling the least bit scrappy at the moment!

Unfortunately people can’t tell how I feel inside. If I’d broken my leg and was hobbling around on crutches people would be falling all over themselves to open doors for me and make my life easier. But the problem is I look like I’m fine, so some people are still doing things that stress me out. One idea I had was that maybe I should wear a sign that says “I’m a frazzled blob of protoplasm – please be kind to me.” so people would realize that I need them to cut me a bit of slack. Then I started thinking that perhaps everyone has some hidden pain, suffering, or grief that can’t be seen, but would benefit from a dose of holiday kindness. The software engineer who’s fixing one last bug before calling it a night might have just broken up with her boyfriend. The admin who arranged the holiday party might be wondering where he’s going to get the money to pay for the holiday gifts he bought his kids. And the exec who is reviewing the project budget might be squeezing in visits to her parent’s nursing home while juggling a very busy holiday season with the rest of her family.

This experience has taught me a thing or two that should come in handy in 2012. Here are a few ideas I came up with as I’ve wandered around the house in my pajamas most of the past week:

• I’m thinking about being nicer to people all year long, not only at Christmas.
• I’m considering being more compassionate to people even when they don’t externally look like they need it.
• I’m not going to wear a sign, but I am going to ask people to be nice to me when I need some slack.

I used to think that being kind would undermine my ability to get results. But, who knows – maybe I’ll even be a more effective project leader if I’m kind. It’s worth a shot!

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(This article was originally published on www.svprojectmanagement.com)

In my timezone I’ve got just a bit over one more day to go in 2011. Personally I always welcome the end of one year and the beginning of the next. It feels like a fresh start to me. It’s been a great year in many ways, but now that I have worked with people from over 50 different countries I tend to feel personally impacted by most of the disasters that occur around the world (Japan, Thailand, etc.), and I’m eager to put a few of this year’s catastrophe’s behind me. And I prefer looking to the future to thinking about the past. Before we bid farewell to 2011, however, let’s reflect on the significant events of the past year.

Below is a terrific list of resources (and my comments) for this end of the year reflection, which I got from Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence News, a free newsletter that I’ve found extremely worthwhile and fascinating to read this past year. If you love science and technology as much as I do you might enjoy receiving this intelligent compilation. Here’s what the newsletter promises: “The Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence newsletter concisely covers relevant major science and technology breakthroughs (daily or weekly) via e-mail. It also lists new blog posts, features, events, videos, and books.” You can sign up for it here.

My favorite of the lot, an impressive example of how to display a wide range of information “at a glance” in a compact form: 365 days: 2011 in review, Nature News

If you don’t have enough to worry about in your personal life, here’s a great list of how the planet’s going to hell in a hand basket: 2011 review: The year in environment, New Scientist

For those of us working on seemingly impossible projects, these 12 pictures contain several examples of “impossibilities” humans have achieved: 2011 review: The year in space, New Scientist

Intelligent computers, 3D printing, and crowdsourcing to do what one person can’t are the most intriguing for me in this list: 2011 review: The year in technology, New Scientist

If you’re a big Facebook fan, you’ll love this list. Well over half of B2B businesses have a Facebook page now. Me, I can’t wait until Google+ replaces it: 2011: The year Facebook came of age, The Next Web

An unimaginative list repeating of much of what you’ve already seen if you visited all of the links above: 2011: A Year In Science, Science2.0 Curious Cub

Some bright spots, but less progress than hoped for in energy-related fields last year. I sure wish I’d delayed getting solar power on my house until these 50% cost reductions occurred: The Year in Energy, Technology Review

Quantum dots and conducting polymers are exciting, but my favorite here is for a material to prevent fingerprint smudges on my iPhone and iPad: The Year in Materials, Technology Review

My first encounter with the word “zettabyte” in standard usage. If 10^21 seems like a lot, consider that the yottabyte (10^24) is ready and waiting for it’s turn: The Year in Numbers, Technology Review

Social media is one big area of focus, but I’m more interested in the web companies that IPO’d, including my personal favorite, Pandora: The Year on the Web, Technology Review

Science and Technology Highlights:

• If you’re a physicist, like I am (by education, not employment), you’ll love reading about teleportation and time travel. If not, you can skip this one: Best of 2011: New Type Of Entanglement Allows ‘Teleportation in Time’, Technology Review Physics arXiv Blog
• Ditto on this one for invisibility cloaks for time, not only the impressive invisibility cloaks for objects: Best of 2011: First Demonstration of Time Cloaking, Technology Review Physics arXiv Blog
• If you want to be reminded of how one giant comet could cause mass extinction on Earth you’ll love this one: Best of 2011: Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883, Technology Review Physics arXiv Blog
• Finally Star Trek tractor beams are proven possible: Best of 2011: How To Turn A Laser Into A Tractor Beam, Technology Review Physics arXiv Blog

If you have a subscription to TIME you can read this whole article: The 50 Best Inventions, TIME If not, just check out the top 5 here. Among them, of course, is Apple’s Siri. Haven’t heard of it? You must be joking!

Mostly tech gadgets, but a car and a bicycle are included. It’s also enjoyable to see items featured here that some of my friends contributed to designing and bringing to market. That’s one reason I love living in Silicon Valley, California, USA! Gear of the Year, Wired

Now that we’re through reflecting on the past, let’s get busy creating a better future for this community called Planet Earth. I’m doing my small part by working with global businesses. WHAT IS A GLOBAL BUSINESS? It is my sincere belief that global businesses, and the human beings who work together in those businesses, have an important role to play in the future of our world. I truly believe that the purpose of global businesses is to solve global problems profitably – and thus sustainably. And it’s my crazy dream that global businesses will bring people all around the world together in ways that are stronger than our differences, and stronger than the borders, boundaries and barriers that separate us.

Looking forward to connecting with you all in 2012!

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(Originally published on ProjectConnections.com in Nov. 2011 and published on SVProjectmanagement.com in Feb, 2012.)

Lately I’ve been fascinated by a book, Creativity in Business, based on the famous course in the Stanford University MBA program by that name. In fact, I’ve been carrying it with me non-stop for the past couple of months and practicing the numerous creativity exercises recommended at every opportunity.

While I find most business books repetitive, every chapter of this book is full of fascinating stories, examples, useful insights and exercises to help the reader master each important concept. But the reason I’m particularly fascinated by this book is because it makes me feel less weird about the crazy stuff I do in workshops with my clients.

The topics and exercises in Creativity in Business aren’t the sort of thing that most people expect to find in a corporate environment. Included are discussions of quantum mechanics, Rupert Sheldrake’smorphogenic fields, Nobel prize winner Ilya Prigogine‘s dissipative structures theory, as well as topics like visualization, drawingmandalas, and even the use of tarot cards. I’m a physicist by education, so I was delighted to run across references to some of my favorite modern physics theories. I’ve used many of these approaches in my own work—I am a big fan of self-organizing systems (see myprevious article on ProjectConnections.com), I make a collage as part of my annual business planning process, and I once found a missing piece of equipment using tarot cards. But I’d feel a bit sheepish about admitting this in a crowd of engineers or senior executives. And I certainly never expected to find a collection of such edgy new age thinking in a business book from a Stanford University professor! In fact, if it hadn’t been written by professors of a prestigious university like Stanford I think most people would regard this book with a great deal of skepticism. Many probably still will. But I strongly believe that Creativity in Business, written over 20 years ago by Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers, contains many valuable tools for project leaders.

The core message in this book is that there is a “creative force” or “essence” available to each and every individual that can dramatically improve business results. But that force can only be unleashed when we dare to trust our intuition and risk the derision of the obsessively left-brained, analytical thinkers among us, including our own inner critic.

Every company I consult with considers innovation an essential ingredient in success. Creativity is the root of innovation, and this book is a very practical guide to increasing creativity in ourselves and others. But it requires a suspension of disbelief, and a willingness to venture beyond what can be explained by deductive reasoning alone—a belief in the possibility that you can know something without knowing how you know it.

The book is structured around nine “heuristics“—experiential strategies intended to awaken the reader to their “creative source.” Here are a few of my favorites. I hope you’ll read the whole book to explore all nine.

#1 – Surrender

This is the first—and my favorite—of the strategies. It is summarized as, “If at first you don’t succeed . . . surrender.” Now, I’m a control freak, and the last person people who know me well would expect to advocate surrendering. It sounds like giving up, and I hate even the thought of that. Me, I’ll wrestle a crocodile to the ground if it’s gonna increase the chances of project success, but surrender?

In this case “surrender” means to trust in the creative process and continue on the journey without knowing how every detail will unfold or how it will turn out. It’s the opposite of precise planning and strong-willed determination. After years of project management discipline, including consciously forcing events down a particular path and to a particular outcome, surrender doesn’t come easily to me. But as a result of this book, I’ve been experimenting with this approach in my business leadership workshops. Naturally, I create elaborate plans for each workshop, and clients frequently demand a detailed timeline. But I am totally prepared to depart from those plans to respond to serendipity, opportunities, and even mistakes. If actual events depart from my plan, I ask, “What does this make possible?” Rather than trying to push the river, I notice where it wants to flow and then go there instead.

I can imagine the howling of those responsible for delivering a specific set of requirements by a fixed date. Don’t worry, this tool isn’t necessarily for those situations (although I’m open to the possibility it could help). It’s for when you need creative breakthroughs, new ideas, and the wisdom to tackle seemingly impossible challenges.

Fear kills creativity. Learning to trust your creative essence, and the creative process itself, will give you the confidence to begin a task that initially seems very difficult, or even impossible. Of course, as I stand in the midst of 45 people from 16 different countries ready to surrender to what’s possible beyond my detailed plans I most definitely feel fear. My inner critic goes on loudspeaker, jabbering away about the likelihood of making a complete fool of myself, and how the entire workshop could very well end up a complete disaster. Rather than yielding to that, I imagine that I’m leaping off a cliff and learning to fly on the way down. There’s no turning back, and I just have to trust that I’ll grow wings. Once I commit 100% to the creative process—once I surrender—I am free to do my best work, and invite others to contribute their very best as well. Somehow, magic happens. It just works.

It’s difficult to put this into a Gantt chart! It’s the old “and then a miracle occurs” task in project scheduling jokes. It’s scary, but it works. Every time. Weird, huh?

#2 – Replace the “Voice of Judgment” (VOJ) with Curiosity

Plenty of research has proven that negative people seem smarter. And don’t we all feel pressure to appear smarter to assure our position in the cosmic pecking order? Well, bad news—negativity is the enemy of creativity! I was consulting with an engineering group at a Fortune 500 company a while back when one director told this story: “My first month here I had lots of creative ideas and I shared them openly. People discouraged me. My second month here I had a few new ideas and shared them with a couple of colleagues. They told me why they weren’t feasible. My third month here I had no ideas.”

If you are in a typical work environment you’ll be able to relate very well to this story. How many ideas would you suggest if you knew that the first response would be discouragement from your peers? And it’s not just discouraging comments that diminish creativity. In her article “How to Kill Creativity,” (registration or subscription required) Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile has said that working towards perfectly legitimate business imperatives such as productivity and control is also systematically crushing creativity. In short, she recommends that the first step toward increased creativity is to stop killing ideas.

Sadly we don’t even need discouraging colleagues to kill our creativity—our own VOJ will happily oblige.Creativity in Business recommends an all-out attack on the barriers to our own creativity, including our own inner critic, judgment from others, and the collective judgment of social norms of our organizations. I’ve found that simply becoming aware of the stream of negative judgment emanating from others, my environment, and myself has given me more courage to persist in my creativity. Creativity is messy. The creative process is risky, and we’re all naturally hesitant to risk failure, or appearing silly. But being uncomfortable is simply part of the process of being creative. Focus instead on being intensely curious about what will unfold once the volume of the VOJ is turned way down.

#3 – Pay Attention

In my experience the one word that characterizes much of human behavior in the workplace is “unconscious.” Human beings easily fall into routines that our powerful brains efficiently relegate to our unconscious mind. Unfortunately being efficient isn’t the only—or most important—goal of work. Being effective is far more desirable. “Pay Attention” is about noticing what is happening on a conscious level so that we can become aware of the ocean of opportunities in which we’re swimming. It’s also about listening deeply to others for other perspectives that we lack.

“Listening generously” has been an important part of every workshop I teach since I first learned of the importance of listening from Barbara Fittipaldi, president of the Center for New Futures, in 1995. Barbara helped me realize that, smart as I was, I knew only a fraction of what could be known about the universe. If I want access to the 99.9999999% that I don’t know, I have to listen with an intensity most people use only when speaking. That kind of listening has been transformative for my projects. I personally feel it has been the secret to success in my most challenging projects.

Creativity in Business suggests a number of intriguing exercises to develop our ability to “pay attention,” including gazing into the eyes of a colleague for two minutes without blinking, making up imaginary translations to Egyptian hieroglyphics, and visualizing your head as the world. Yes, really.

Yes, There’s More!

If you haven’t given up on all of this creativity mumbo jumbo after reading about the first three heuristics, there are six more you can explore, which I paraphrase as:

• Ask “Stupid” Questions
• Do Only What’s Easy, Effortless, and Enjoyable
• Don’t Think About It
• Yes or No – Make a Decision
• Be Who You Are
• Practice Detachment – helicopter above the situation . . .

I do hope that you’ll be curious enough to not only read this book, but also do as I have and practice each of the exercises it contains. Personally, I’ve found it useful to have the paperback with me when I run into someone who shrinks from some creative experience. For example, in the middle of one of the many crazy workshop exercises I wave it about and shout, “I know you might feel a little silly doing this, but the exercises in THIS book from Stanford University are even weirder!”

Although difficult to explain, the impact of this book on my work has been profound. I would even say “magical” . . . but that would be so weird! Let me know what you experience.

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Some of the best mentoring I’ve ever received is from executives. Even when I was a mere pawn in the corporate chess game I longed to understand the game from the view of the king. Working in the basement of the building which is now the Facebook headquarters, I mostly had a view of the shipping and receiving dock. Although I had plenty to do in the bowels of what was then an analytical instrument manufacturing facility, I found working without a clear vision of where we were headed as on organization unsatisfying. And in my state of youthful exuberance I was truly convinced that I could make a meaningful difference to the success of our organization if only I knew what the goals were.

With no mortgage to pay and no kids in college, I was free to take some chances, so one day one of my scrappy gal pals and I invited our new division manager to lunch. He must have thought I was incredibly brazen, because he was moderately feared by some of the more timid souls in our midst, and I know he was incredibly busy. But he agreed to meet with us over lunch, and that was a real turning point for me. First of all, he paid for lunch, which was a nice bonus. In addition after that I really felt committed to doing my part to make our business successful. Here’s how we managed to get him to be a “micro-mentor” for us:

• We told him we admired his leadership style.
• We asked him to help us understand his goals so we could be more supportive of him.
• We promised that we’d pay back his time invested in far greater productivity if he met with us.
• We only asked him for one meeting. And we never used the word “mentor”.

• Just ask for one short meeting.
• Tell them you are committed to helping them achieve their goals, and you’d really benefit from hearing their vision directly from them. (Make sure you are sincere. No BS!)
• Listen Enthusiastically.
• Follow Up Graciously.

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