If you are looking for a great starter to discuss cultural diversity within teams or diversity in general, this fabulous short story from Pixar "For The Birds" is a good help.

The animation is 3 minutes long and you can find it here on YouTube.

Other postings that get you started:

Deviant Behavior In Project Management
Do You Know Why Every Manager Wears A Suit?
Project Sociology - Part One (video)
Project Sociology - Part Two (video)
Change Perspective: Working In Bangalore

I love Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG), the ones that are life changing, the ones that make your existence worthwhile, the ones that make you feel powered up like an energizer bunny. Goals like the one Al Gore is presenting in his "Challenge To Repower America":

"Power all US energy within 10 years with non-carbon based fuel" or "100% Clean Energy in 10 Years".

WOW. Now THAT is a goal. A big one. A hairy one.

Of course, I can complain about him not including the rest of the world. I could look under every rock trying to find small dubious details about Big Al's motivations. But as Ghandi put it: "We must be the change we wish to see." And I think, Project Managers must be the change if we want to reach goals like this one.

Entrepreneurs see the opportunity.
Venture capitalist provide the money.
Scientist invent the breakthrough.
Project Managers kill the thing by providing "the proper process"… Death by compliance.

We as Project Managers have to rise to this occasion. Why does this matter?

People will turn to us to get thing done. We are the Getting-Things-Done-Squad! We have to drive these changes trough the swamp of corporate and global politics; we have to go full speed with zero-visibility; we have to make it all fit together in the end. There is no time for ass covering, compliance-for-compliance-sake, review-upon-review, no-you-cannot-change Project Management.

Be the change. It matters.

You can tell, can't you? It is a dead give away… I cannot stop thinking about resilience!

Check out the Youtube channel of The Stockholm Resilience Centre, it has informational short videos about …. resilience… like this one: What Is Resilience?



If you like podcasts, how about one hour "Resilience: Adaptation and Transformation in Turbulent Times"?

"Resilience…the capacity to absorb shocks to the system without losing the ability to function. Can whole societies become resilient in the face of traumatic change? In April 2008, natural and social scientists from around the world gathered in Stockholm, Sweden for a first-ever global conference applying lessons from nature’s resilience to human societies in the throes of unprecedented transition."

On this blog I talk a lot about the need for people to be able to see different perspectives on matters. An impressive example of this is shown in the video below
(if you read the RSS feed, you need to visit this post to view). In it an American programmer goes 30 days to Bangalore, India to work over there. He is laid off in the US, his job was outsourced to Bangalore. He starts out with a very angry attitude ("Dude! Give my job back!") and returns with a more mild perspective on things.

If you are from the US (or Europe) this video may be an eye opener. If you are from India, I am interested what your sentiments are regarding this video.

BTW this video might take some time to load. Part 1 and Part 2.

Thanks to Tim Ferris for pointing out this video.

How are people coordinating work when there is no central control? You might read about all this self-organizing, no-command, treehugging teams, but you just keep on wondering how this can work?

Ted.com brings us again a great presentation that provides us with the answer to how ants do exactly this. Watch it, and watch it till the end. You'll be amazed about the simplicity and effectiveness.

Thanks to BioTeams.com for pointing out this video.

Earlier this month Ted.com published a presentation by Howard Rheingold called "Way-New Collaboration". He talks about how the old paradigm of command-control is being replaced by Way-New Collaboration. He connects his story with social dilemma's like Prisoners Dilemma and Tragedy of the Commons. This is the best presentation I've seen that is telling the story I am trying to tell!" Why didn't I come up with this

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