The Wow Project

Executing Your Wow Project

Now that you've worked hard to identify and to sell your Wow Project, you're ready to roll into phase three: time to execute!

Except that it doesn't work that way -- not exactly. Only in magazine articles can you break down work into separate, tidy phases. In the real world of work, this stuff overlaps, runs together, merges, separates, and merges again. In real work life, the DNA of a Wow Project is present in each of the four phases: What differs is the relative concentration in each phase. So, for example, while you're getting your Wow Project started, you're already doing some of the things that will become important later in the life of the project -- such as practicing how to pitch it and doing early community organizing. And as you move into selling your Wow Project, you're already doing some of the things that you'll need to do to execute it -- such as prototyping, listening, and improving. Just remember: You don't stop doing some activities simply because the emphasis shifts. It's more a matter of recognizing where you are in the project's evolution, so that you can make the right kind of concentrated effort at the right time.

At the execution phase, you need to be sure to put the right kind of concentrated effort into following three important "do's" and three equally important "don'ts."

Do think of execution as a series of rapid prototypes. Life is a series of approximations. You will never get your project right the first time (or the 21st time, for that matter) -- never. Holding onto it until you get it "right" is simply wrong. That's a surefire way to guarantee that, by the time you unveil the project, not only won't it be right, but you also won't have enough time, energy, or support to go back and make it right. Great projects live off instant feedback and adjustment cycles. That's one way to look at the Web: It's a giant real-time prototype.

But the practice of using fast feedback and fast adjustment cycles predates the Web. Hewlett-Packard pioneered that practice to develop several innovative products: People would build a prototype and leave it lying around in the open for others to talk about. Instant feedback allows for instant adjustment cycles. The more iterations you can rapidly go through, the faster you can execute your project. David Kelley, a design genius and the CEO of Ideo, had it exactly right when he said, "Fail often to succeed sooner." As strange as it may sound, the work of execution is actually all about failure. So celebrate it! Bronze an oversized screw, and award it each week to the project-team member who made the "best screwup of the week." Why not?

Do think, live, sleep, eat, and breathe your time line. It's time to get serious about getting your project done. So break this big amorphous thing called "your project" into a living To Do list. What needs to happen today? Tomorrow? This week? Build a simple, easy-to-use tool to track the project's progress. The tool could be something as old-fashioned as a three-ring binder with a chapter divider for each deliverable. If you want to see a good example of the three-ring binder at work, read Guy Kawasaki's book "The Macintosh Way" (Addison-Wesley, 1989). It includes the complete Macintosh rollout plan -- an exemplary living To Do list if there ever was one.

Also, master the art of the 15-minute meeting -- a daily, attendance-required "hot" session in which each member of the project team gives a quick progress report, identifies that day's milestones -- or issues a desperate call for help. If CNN can organize its whole day of broadcasting in a 30-minute morning meeting (as it was doing in 1993, when I visited its headquarters), then you certainly can keep your project on track in 15 minutes.

Do keep it fun. The point of the living To Do list is to make it clear that you have reached the button-down phase of the project. But that doesn't mean that you have to button down your personality. Don't you dare lose the sense of playfulness that brought the team together in the first place.

The simplest way to make sure that you don't lose sight of the joy of doing a Wow Project is to remember to celebrate. No accomplishment is too small or too insignificant to warrant a little celebration. As you hit each of your milestones and as you fill up the three-ring binder with your project team's accomplishments, remember the pause that refreshes. It doesn't have to be a big bash: It can be just enough to keep the troops pumped.

Just as important as those three "do's" are the three "don'ts": the bad habits that teams can slip into when it comes time to execute -- the killers that can derail even the most promising Wow Project.