At the Center for Information and Communication Sciences (CICS), project work and project management are key attributes of the Center and its people.
Project management is a constant topic of discussion and communication here. I have developed some project management theory of my own, which I will go into another time. However, as a start I will give one of my theses here--
The information economy is characterized by project work. The industrial economy that we are supplanting was characterized by process work.
The information economy is about projects. The industrial economy was about processes.
If these theses statements represent accurate perceptions of our economic environment,
then we need to know how to work in projects--and manage projects well--
to succeed and prosper in the information economy.
So it's with interest I point to the following blog post from Fast Company magazine's site,
"We Are Our Projects" which I jumped into following a Tom Peters site link.
Fast Company is one of the best business magazines publishing today.
It is less a business news magazine than a features journal. I recommend it, especially for professionals early in their careers and for veteran professionals looking for new ideas. Here is Fast Company's homepage.
Below is the complete text from Fast Company's entry (please see the source for use in citations and for its links to its own internal references):
"We Are Our Projects"
"In a past issue of FAST COMPANY, Tom Peters asserted that you are your projects. A more up-to-date tweak at that might be drawn from a recent Computerworld piece that outlines how to pick a project team.
"While Kathleen Melymuka's perspective is understandably tech-centric, her advice and ideas can be applied in any industry or company:
* Fewer Is Better After the fifth member, a project team's effectiveness is inversely proportional to its mass.
* Attitude Counts People with a good work ethic who are upbeat, respectful of others and continually learning will help lift the team's spirit. Conversely, one cynic can spoil the entire team's outlook.
* Diversity Lowers Risk The riskier the project, the more diversity you need in the team. Desire for closure can lead [people] to focus on a strategy before considering the alternatives.
* Familiarity Breeds Action It's helpful if team members have worked together before.
* Availability Trumps Everything You need to identify what resources you will need and when.
* Leverage Matters One key to obtaining leverage is good relationships with other managers. Leverage can also come from an educated customer. If you can't get [the right people], alter or postpone the project until you can.
"Posted by Heath Row at April 20, 2004 01:50 PM | Category: teamwork | "
Kyle Wade, a master's degree candidate at the Center for Information and Communication Sciences (CICS), pointed to Tom Peters' weblog in a recent post "Tom Peters' Blog and the Bird Flu."
Kyle's post and his interesting connecting to the Tom Peters take on bird flu sent me back to Tom Peters' blog.
Tom Peters' work is well known here at the Center. Peters changed his longstanding website into a weblog in the summer of 2004. That summer, my CICS graduate students in the Human Factors Advanced Research Seminar reported the changeover as an example of changing Internet interface practices.
Peters called 2004 "The Year of the Blog." It was the year that weblogs really had an influence in the United States presidential and federal elections, among other impacts weblogging had in human communication.
I have linked to Tom Peters' blog before, for example, noting the reorganization of the Tom Peters company. I also linked to the Tom Peters organization's report on the First Blog Business Summit.
Yet it was Kyle Wade's post in recent days that sent me back to Tom Peters' weblog again this week.
As always, a rewarding visit. I learn something every time. Below is a link to Tom Peters' current personal and professional posting on a trip to London, "Walking Paradise!"
Embedded in the posting is a series of reflections on the British naval hero Horatio Nelson's leadership characteristics. They are not all positive--yet intriguing and encouraging for revealing the human aspects of a leader in the person of a world historical figure.
Britain is celebrating this year the 200th anniversary of Nelson's victory over Napoleon's naval forces in the Battle of Trafalgar. They fought the battle on 21 October 1805.
Here are Nelson's characteristics Tom Peters picked out of a Nelson biography:
"tireless self-promoter, sought hero status, sought patronage [suck-up], guts, courage, master of his craft, passion for pleasures of the flesh, driven by duty, autocratic, dictatorial, team player, practitioner of participative management 200 years before it was popularized, loved hanging out with the lads, man's man, lady's man, diligent manager, powerfully inspirational, spiritual, passionate, ... ambitious, aggressive, confident, impulsive, rarely cautious or circumspect, risk-taker, emotional, expressed feelings openly ... classless, fair, self-sacrificing, encouraging, optimistic ... unconventional, did not get along well with superiors ... xenophobic, immodest, impatient, intolerant, imprudent in public and in private ... lucky."
Here is the source link to Tom Peters' weblog entry "Walking Paradise!" which I'm sure you'll enjoy and hope you'll profit from, personally or professionally.
Usability theorist Jakob Nielsen, who worked at Bellcore in its glory days, has put together a great set of usability guidelines for weblogs.
Nielsen has a great pushmail service called "Alertbox." I recommend subscribing to it, for information and communication professionals.
Here is the introductory set of paragraphs from his weblogs guidelines issue of 17 October 2005
[URL = http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html]:
Summary:
Weblogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues, making it hard for new readers to understand the site and trust the author.
Weblogs are a form of website. The thousands of normal website usability guidelines therefore apply to them, as do this year's top ten design mistakes. But weblogs are also a special genre of website; they have unique characteristics and thus distinct usability problems.
One of a weblog's great benefits is that it essentially frees you from "Web design." You write a paragraph, click a button, and it's posted on the Internet. No need for visual design, page design, interaction design, information architecture, or any programming or server maintenance.
Weblogs make having a simple website much easier, and as a result, the number of people who write for the Web has exploded. This is a striking confirmation of the importance of ease of use.
Weblogs' second benefit is that they're a Web-native content genre: they rely on links, and short postings prevail. You don't have to write a full article or conduct original research or reporting. You can simply find something interesting on another site and link to it, possibly with commentary or additional examples. Obviously, this is much easier than running a conventional site, and again indicates the benefits of lowering the barriers to computer use.
Here is some writing that I'm at work on in October 2005. It's part of some continuous thinking I've been doing on strategic management for the information economy.
One of my theses is that we are living in "a knowledge society driven by an information economy."
Therefore, we need understanding about how to manage in an information economy.
"Strategic Management for the Information Economy: Theory Guides Practice and Practice Corrects Theory"
Copyright © 2005 by Jay Edwin Gillette. All Rights Reserved.
Strategic management is the art of the future. It’s not a task undertaken while waiting for the future to arrive--it’s the way to unfold the future to reach your goals. Strategic management is a requirement for survival and prosperity for every organization doing business in the new information economy.
Even though strategic management is required of every organization, a crisis mentality has overwhelmed many leaders. The horizon has shrunk to the annual budget. Decisions are measured by the quarter. The firefight of the day has overshadowed strategic development of the organization in a global context.
Precisely because we are in an era of structural economic change, leaders need to raise their sights to see clearly and act on a bigger picture. As a practical starting point, today’s realistic strategic management horizon is three years, down from the norm of the old “five year plan.” In the rate of change we are experiencing today, events shift too greatly to rely on a five-year timeframe.
Yet too short a planning horizon is also dangerous. We see that in truth some contemporary leaders actually operate on only a 12-month frame of reference. This short time horizon leads organizations to jerk their way into the future by fits and starts, because they can’t see far enough ahead to plot a smooth, informed and efficient course.
For comparison, visualize the way a hopelessly near-sighted person would drive a car. If he can’t see far enough ahead, either he drives recklessly or over-cautiously, and in neither case will the driver–or passenger–be inspired with confidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_man
Polymath
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from Renaissance man)
For the 1994 movie, see Renaissance Man.
A polymath (also known as a polyhistor) is a person who excels in multiple fields, particularly in both arts and sciences. The most common other term for this phenomenon is Renaissance man, but also in use are Homo universalis and Uomo Universale, which in Latin and Italian, respectively, translate as "Universal Man". (NB In Latin homo may be male or female, the Latin word for a male human being vir.)
Many notable polymaths lived during the European Renaissance period, and a rounded approach to education was typical of the ideals of the humanists of the time. A gentleman or courtier of that era was expected to speak several languages, play a musical instrument, write poetry and so on, thus fulfilling the Renaissance ideal. During the Renaissance, Baldassare Castiglione, in his The Book of the Courtier, wrote a guide to being a polymath. On the other hand "polymath" may be applied more strictly, taking Leonardo da Vinci or Goethe as prime examples, and requiring a universality of approach. A polymath may not necessarily be classed as a genius, which is a related classification; and certainly a genius may not display the breadth to qualify as a polymath. Albert Einstein is a prime example of a person generally regarded as a "genius" who was not a polymath.
I justed posted on Leonardo da Vinci over at the Information Renaissance blog (q.v.).
There I wrote about the concept of Renaissance Man:
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was and is the archetypal "Renaissance Man." According to the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, 10th edition, the phrase "Renaissance Man" entered the English language in 1906. They define the concept as "a person who has wide interests and is expert in several areas."
The older term "polymath" describes something of the concept. "Polymath" entered the English language in 1621:
"a person of encyclopedic learning."
Polymath is from Greek, polymathes, "very learned," from poly, "many" or "much" plus manthanein, "to learn," [itself related to the term "to pay attention"; "mathematics" comes from this same word]. This information is from the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary (1998), 10th edition, under the words ("sub verbo"--s.vv.--is the scholar's abbreviation), pp. 903 and 717.
In my current project, the book Confidence in the Future: Succeed and Prosper in the Information Renaissance, I recommend that individuals work to become renaissance men or women to succeed in our era.
It's a recommendation that is challenging, yet it's the path to surviving and thriving.
Learn or be left behind. Grow or die. It's a vision of success that we can all develop, from wherever we start.
Start today. We have a lifetime of learning ahead.