Project Zen
ISBN 0-9661703-3-4
2003 DesigningLife Books
Paperback, 105 pages
Retail $12.95 US
Project Zen simplifies our approach to project work. Written for project teams, it suggests that project success is based on working in harmony with three core principles: interdependence, uniqueness, and impermanence. When we plan and organize projects using these principles, we make it easier to come in on target, on time, and on budget.
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Contents
- Intention
- Context
- Invitation
- Life As Project
- Zen
- Interdependence
- Planning: Better Chaos
- Timing Is Everything
- Project Tracking Tools
- Project ROI
- Inclusion In Projects
- The Diversity Edge
- Dialogue
- Project EQ
- Uniqueness
- Curiosity
- Being Reality-centered
- Negative Space
- Good Questions
- Closing Loops & Gaps
- Prototyping
- Beauty & Use
- Impermanence
- Anticipating Change
- Responding To Change
- Project Serendipity
- Selling Change
- Multi-project Environments
- Shared Mind
- Living In The Present
- Project work as practice
- The Art Of Critique
- Classic Mistakes In Projects
- Resistance To Planning
- Everyday Practice
- The Inner Game Of Project Leadership
- Project Management In A Nutshell
- Looking Ahead
- 9 Project Tracking Tools
- 76 Good Project Management Questions
- Resources
- About The Author
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Jack's other Books
- Collaborative Creativity / Oakhill Books 1997
- Accidental Conversations / Designing Life Books 2002
- Appreciative Leadership / DesigningLife Books 2005
Opening Chapters
Intention
Project Zen is my third book, following Accidental Conversation and Collaborative Creativity. On the surface, it presents an apparent challenge in the transition of themes. Accidental Conversations is about the power of serendipity – how to leverage the power of luck and surprise in our work and life. Project Zen is about the power of intentional organization – how to get projects on target, on time, and on budget.
My commitment to journalistic integrity requires either that I provide some seamless continuity between these seemingly disparate themes or that I offer an apologetic retraction for the heresies about serendipity conspired by Accidental Conversations.
Luckily, there are no apologies to deliver. Project Zen is a celebration of life’s paradox that serendipity and organization are complementary and synergistic pursuits.
As it turns out, projects are dynamic, quantum spaces swarming with ambiguity, uncertainty, and change. No amount of planning or talent can change this fact; it is more a statement about the universe than about any project we might take on.
Project Zen is about appreciating the quantum nature of projects. It doesn’t expect that projects are orderly spaces where perfect predictability and control are possible. It assumes that projects don’t necessarily happen according to the book. So this is definitely not “the book” on which project orthodoxy can be based.
A Zen approach to project management is based on an expectation that change is a constant, resources are usually imperfect, and most people in projects lack of a passion for being controlled.
Project Zen intends to be a dependable companion on your journey through project environments that defy textbook recipes and outdated approaches to planning. It aims at giving you a unique look into the craft of project management as an opportunity to rediscover what organization looks like even in a world dedicated to surprise.
This is not as monumental a task as it may seem, given our current understanding of intelligent organization as agile, dynamic, improvisational, and collaborative. At the end of the day, projects succeed to the degree that we appreciate their quantum nature.
Context
In my earliest memories of projects, we’re crafting tree houses and stage performances, ball diamonds, and garage bands.
Through the pure play of improvisation and apprenticing, we discovered how to navigate the dynamic paths of projects. Today, we practice the same principles in the projects that renew and enrich our communities of life and work.
What we suspected then and know today is that project management is, first and last, a craft. Like painting, music, sculpture, architecture, cooking, medicine, and writing, project management requires the same fluid alchemy of technical knowledge and intuitive feel that any craft requires.
The transparent irony in learning any craft from a book becomes manageable when we consider that a well-designed book can skillfully present principles and distinctions that bring clarity to our learning and confidence in our experience.
The intention in Project Zen is to present a set of principles and distinctions that inspire project success across disciplines and industries. Thanks to the fact that we now have a body of good project management practices, these principles and distinctions are quite portable and scalable.
Project Zen is dedicated to those I am privileged to coach and mentor in project management. It is designed to give them a larger context for the conversations we have about getting and keeping projects on target, on time, and on budget. It is also written for the many people and project teams I will never meet, but through this book will humbly and gladly serve nonetheless.
The wisdom presented here was inspired in part by my project mentors and teachers, including friends and colleagues who have been delightful companions in project adventures over the past three decades.
Thanks to my clients who over the past 25 years have invited me to experience again and again the saying that you really don’t learn something until you teach it. Thanks to my team of skillful readers who helped me distill raw brain grain into a finer brew of wisdom – including James McCabe?, Mariamne Ingalls, Tim Kloppenborg, and Marty Moor. Special thanks to my project mentors, particularly my father, for decades of priceless mentorship.
Invitation
Project Zen is for people who appreciate simplicity. It explores project work without complicated models that require thick dictionaries to parse. Given that some of the more respected tomes on the topic approach a size that can take out a small dog – and that busy people love quick reads – this is a worthy task.
The core of project management is not that complicated. Even though many organizations have complex systems for managing the maze of administrative tasks associated with projects, these requirements are more about the management of the organization’s infrastructure than they are about the management of projects. Project management is hard work but quite manageable for mere mortals nevertheless.
Project Zen is the practice of managing projects from a Zen perspective. Zen has always been about simplicity. Zen gardens, art, and poetry express the wisdom, power, and beauty of working in harmony with nature. Project Zen is about bringing this natural elegance to the practice of project work.
From a Zen perspective, project work is about working from the same three principles that create harmony in every other aspect of our lives: interdependence, uniqueness, and impermanence.
Although there are several practical charts and tools presented here, (see the Project Tracking Tools & Project Management In A Nutshell chapters), Project Zen presents no fixed formula or recipe. Most projects are too unique and dynamic for anything so inflexible or naïve.
Through a few simple principles, we can successfully navigate project chaos with intelligence, vitality, and sensitivity. We will explore simple principles that will guide us wherever we are in a project, however challenging the project is. They are principles that give us the clarity and courage to navigate through any project.
The applications of these principles are unlimited; they apply to any size and scope of project. They apply whether you are working with a team of a few or a few hundred others; they apply equally to thousand dollar and multi-million dollar budgets—across diverse industries and disciplines.
Life As Project
Life is a dynamic web of projects. At home, we use projects to improve lifestyles and choreograph a lifespan of events and excursions. At work, we rely on projects to improve the performance of our organizations and invent our market’s next new thing.
At the scale of our personal relationships, communities, and organizations, projects are always at the core of renewal. Projects move our enterprises, communities, and dreams forward. When we move to new levels in our careers, each transition happens in projects. Long-term relationships travel along trajectories punctuated with projects, some brief and others life long. Projects emerge from our capacity for innovation and optimism. They are expressions of our courage and connectivity. Projects represent the intentional creation of our future.
Today, we benefit from whole industries and thriving institutions that didn’t exist even a few generations ago. All great enterprises and organizations that enrich us culturally, spiritually, and economically begin as projects – some humbly incubated in garages, others launched from the ports of corporate behemoths.
All projects aim at something new—something that exists beyond what exists today: a new space, product, market, system, improvement, level of performance, or application. They emerge from our deepest needs to transcend history. They well up from a place where we expect we are capable of more. When we want to achieve something new, a project gets us there.
Projects are living things that organically emerge, mature, and bear fruit that seeds future projects. Projects are the confluence of opportunities, intentions, resources, and tasks.
Project work is a practice, much like medicine, sports, and the arts. It is a skill set we can learn, develop, improve, and master—even though mastery always involves the intellectual and emotional humility to approach projects with a beginner’s mind. Every project we take on and learn from makes us better at managing our next projects.
Project work is a life skill. Because life is a continuous evolution of projects, the better we get at managing projects, the better our life and world becomes. If projects are the intentional creation of our personal and collective futures, our projects are as important as life itself.
Zen
Zen is the practice of living and working in harmony with reality. Rooted in centuries-old Japanese Buddhism and Chinese Taoism, Zen suggests that being in harmony with reality optimizes our capacity for creativity, resiliency, and beauty. When we’re in harmony with reality, we act confidently, skillfully, and efficiently.
Effective project teams are known for their ability to live and work in harmony with reality – whatever it is. They are not easily distracted or discouraged by change or uncertainty. They do not fight with projects; they do not resist the challenges and opportunities that projects present. They approach projects with a sense of equanimity. Seeing things as they are, they work in harmony with reality as it is.
In project work, we do our best work when everything we do is based on reality. Reality-centeredness is the basis of all creativity, honesty, and clear vision in projects. Living and working in harmony with reality begins with living and working in harmony with three principles: interdependence, uniqueness, and impermanence.
Interdependence is the realization that people and tasks depend on one another to produce sums larger than their parts. Nothing in life happens or exists in isolation. The quality and timing of downstream tasks depend on the quality and timing of upstream tasks. Challenges bigger than any one of us are only managed successfully when managed by many of us. In collaboration, we are smarter, more efficient, and more productive than we could ever be alone.
Uniqueness is the understanding that every moment in a project is different. When we appreciate uniqueness, we recognize each moment as it is. We see each project team member’s unique talents and each project’s unique challenges and opportunities. The realization of uniqueness is the basis for beauty and truth in projects.
Impermanence is the fact that our world is always in changing in ways we can neither predict nor prevent. Whether change happens at the hands of growth, innovation, or poor planning, it is a potential constant. If we forget how constant change is in life, all we need to do is take on a new project. On our best days, we anticipate change and manage it before it manages us.
From a Zen perspective, projects suffer to the degree that we lack understanding and practicing these three principles. The intention in Zen is to achieve each project’s unique potential by working with these principles.
Managing projects from these three principles helps us manage the typical challenges we face in any kind of project:
- Keeping project plans realistic and agile
- Staying on target, on schedule, and on budget
- Making sure projects are well resourced and supported
- Keeping people energized, collaborative, and creative
- Managing project change, risk, and unknowns
Projects succeed because we work in harmony with the principles of interdependence, uniqueness, and impermanence. Our capacity for happiness in projects is rooted in our capacity to understand these principles and base our practice of project work on them. Our capacity for creativity, collaboration, and serendipity is based on our intention to work from these basic life principles.
Ultimately projects succeed because we live and work by these principles. Suzuki Roshi, one of America’s premier Zen teachers once said, “It is easy to be enlightened, difficult to practice.” It is easy to think about these principles; the trick is to make them a daily practice. That’s where the gold is.
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