The Wow Project

Don't talk it to death. You're going to spend a good part of any project talking about your project. But the reality in most organizations is that execution too often turns into talking about execution. It becomes talking instead of doing. The team stops building prototypes and beta-testing and instead starts talking about what needs to happen next. Or the team spends too much time in meetings, talking to each other, and not enough time in the marketplace, talking with end-users. Think of it as a math problem: If most teams have a talk/do ratio of 70% talking to 30% doing, then you want to reverse those figures so that the ratio is 70% doing to 30% talking.

Don't stop selling. Here's another way to think of execution: It's "just" scaled-up sales. (No baloney.) Your job during the execution phase is to roll out your project. And that means building an ever-widening support base. Execution is about taking the 5 fervent believers who backed you during the finding-and-creating phase, along with the 15 fervent believers who joined the cause during the selling phase, and adding the 45 new fervent believers who can help you take your project into the field -- where it can be implemented. Never stop selling! Never stop recruiting!

And, finally, Don't lose the emotion; don't let the project go dry. Just as important as keeping the project on track is keeping it Wow! Face it: Project execution is emotionally draining. It's easy for the Wow in the project to slip away slowly and imperceptibly. After a while, you and your team get so tired that you forget what gave the project its Wow, Beautiful, Revolutionary, Impact, Raving Fans quality in the first place. You're in danger of executing what will turn out to be just another project -- a "mediocre success" as one of my seminar participants damningly put it. (Another equation: Mediocre Success = Death.) This is the time to take a station break. Take your team off-site for a day-long excursion. Go back to first principles, and see whether you're still on course emotionally. Bring in a new recruit, someone with fresh energy and enthusiasm. But don't lose the energy that created the Wow Project in the first place.

Handing Off Your Wow Project

Congratulations! After what feels like -- or actually is -- months or years of hard work and mega-amps of personal energy, the project is happening. You've achieved rollout: The new product is in the marketplace, the new service is available to customers, the new sales force is in place, the new customer-service center is open for business. Now comes the (really) hard part.

It's time for you to turn the project over to someone else to run on a day-to-day basis. It's time for you to walk away from the project that you worked so hard and against such long odds to create, sell, and execute -- so that you can now start the creative cycle all over again. It's the healthy thing to do, it's necessary, and it's hard. (Just ask Newt Gingrich.)

It's healthy and necessary because, as I know from personal experience, people who have what it takes to create Wow Projects rarely have what it takes to operate those projects. It's the same kind of difference that typically separates an entrepreneur from a manager: If you're good at creating the project, at fighting and winning the "us versus them" internal battles, and at handling the emotional roller-coaster ride of getting the project going, then chances are that you won't be good at managing it over the long haul. Besides, you've done what you set out to do. You may even be tired of the specifics of that particular project; you may be hungry for a new challenge.

But it's also hard -- because, as you've learned throughout the project experience, project management is emotion management. Period. It's yet another core truth about projects that they don't teach you in the "official" literature. But that's the nub of the issue: Projects are intensely personal. You and your team have invested all that you've got of yourselves and your relationships into making your project a go. When you think about that project -- even if you're just looking at cold numbers on a sheet of paper -- what you remember are all of the late nights, the pizza-at-the-office dinners, the arguments, and the agreements that made it all worthwhile. Now you've got to hand over all of that to someone else. Handling the handoff is the last test of the PWPL.

The first thing you do is to throw the party-to-end-all-parties. If project management is emotion management, then you and your team members will need a serious celebration to mark your accomplishment. Don't be shy about it: Remember, you're still selling the project, still building your brand. Commission the writing of a project history that records the contributions of your team members and that captures the important lessons that were learned during the project's development. And send out thank-you notes to all of the helpers, supporters, and raving fans who made it possible: You're going to need them again -- on your next Wow Project. Make sure that you give your successor your blessing, and that everything you do as you hand off the project is designed to make that person's job easier. The whole bloody point is to make sure that the project stays successful -- not to demonstrate that without you, it would quickly hit the skids. (Memo to self: Don't be dumb!)