Coachamatic

A few months ago I attended a conference in NYC where Michael Port (of Book Yourself Solid Fame) was one of the speakers. I attended this conference with the purpose of interviewing Michael for my radio show. For those of you who have never heard or seen Michael speak, it is a treat! He is a bundle of positive energy combined with amazing business insight.

Michael’s 7 Simple Rules to REMARKable Projects was the topic of the following interview. I thought it might help those of you who want to put an end to boring, unsuccessful or incomplete projects in your workplace!

Michelle Yozzo Drake (MYD): Michael is the Author of Book Yourself Solid. All of my listeners always want to know the big answer to the question of how you get booked solid, how their business creates business and meaningful projects and how they just fill their day with their passionate work. You have rules, right…Simple Rules…

Michael Port (MP): Actually I have 7 simple rules for REMARKable projects.

I could also call it the 7 simple rules for doing anything with other people. And I use the word remarkable in the way that Seth Godin uses the word remarkable…He really inspired me in a book he wrote called The Purple Cow. His idea is that if you create remarkable products they do your marketing for you because other people REMARK on them.

MYD: Yep, they do…and sometimes that is not a good thing. Reputation is what you have after your project is complete…and it can be good or bad.

MP: You can’t determine a result…all projects go differently than planned.

MYD: Absolutely. You can count on that also.

MP: No matter how well you plan they are going to go differently. So since we can’t determine a result, we can create instead circumstances for navigating for the kind of results that would please us. That really is our ultimate goal. One of the things that hangs a lot of people up is that we feel like we’ve got to be perfect before we can go out and do something.

MYD: That is a major stumbling block for small business owners. That they are always waiting for it to be absolutely the right time.

MP: Before they go out to market…before they share it with somebody, ecetera. And the fact of the matter is that you cannot really create a project or product without putting it into the real world. Its got to include feedback from others, you can’t just do it by yourself. So, we use these 7 rules to help us navigate to getting what we want. The 1st rule is you must bring your passion to the project. Sounds simple enough, right? But think about it for a second, how many projects have you been involved in that you were not passionate about? And then think about those projects and think about how much you enjoyed working on them and if they were successful. Anybody that has worked on a project that they have not been passionate about they are going to raise their hand and go “that was a horrible experience” So we gotta start there. We also have to start there because if we want to work with others, if we want to collaborate with others we need to get them passionate about what we are doing.

MYD: They have to get excited about the idea.

MP: Exactly! Or else it’s just you running around…Wooo…Woooo…this is crazy. So, if you are not passionate about it you will not get others to be passionate about it. Right? So the first rule is passion.

MP: Then once we make sure that we are passionate about what we are working on then we make sure that we are bringing our talents to the project.

MYD: What tools do we have to bring to the table.

MP: Yes! It is very American, I think, that we are always looking at our weaknesses…like oh, I gotta be better at this, stronger at this…I’m not so good at this. And it is true that we may need to work on areas that we need to be better at but we are not yet fully expressed. There was a wonderful study done that was then put into a book by the Gallup organization called Good to Great, it’s been a best seller for years.

MYD: Excellent book! It is great! I recommend it to a lot of my clients.

MP: What this book suggests is that we can become exponentially better at the things that we are naturally good at but only marginally better at the things that we are not naturally talented at. So when we talk about bringing your talents to the project we want to make sure that you are working only in the areas of your greatest natural strengths on the project. And skills and talents are different things…you can develop a skill… if you are intelligent and have a good work ethic you can develop a skill. Meaning like, I could develop a skill to do graphic design. I could learn the programs and the basic concepts like you should not mix these kinds of colors, but if I don’t have a talent for it my work will be unremarkable.

MYD: It will be uninspired.

MP: Right. Even if I am passionate! And what is interesting is that generally that passion and talent go had in hand.

MYD: Right, because when you feel like you hit that home run you feel good! You know it and you feel it in the core of your being. That’s where the passion comes from.

MP: So that’s rule number 2 use your talents…Then when you are working with others, which our conference is about you want to make sure that you line up a group of people that have complimentary talents. And complimentary skills as well, but the talents is the first place we start.

MYD: Do you think that people are afraid of working with people whose skill sets are different than their own?

MP: Could be. I think that sometimes people are afraid of working with each other for a variety of reasons. I think that we might be afraid that they are going to be better than us…that we might somehow become irrelevant and get pushed out or they are not going to be good enough and we’ve got this idea of ourselves and if we don’t do it ourselves it won’t get done right.

MYD: Control.

MP: Control. Yeah. A sense of we don’t really know where we are going so we don’t want to take the risk of doing it with some other people.

MYD: But I am getting you off the point.

MP: No, it’s a good point…a really good question, there is a lot of fears that we have around working with others. Am I going to be able to communicate with this person…am I going to be able to trust them.

MYD: It’s the fear of the unknown.

The rest of the rules are coming in Part 2 of this post. If you just can’t wait… you can listen to show #051806 by logging into the free members only page.

Posted on Sep 15th 06 by Michelle Drake.

Michelle hosts a weekly talk-radio show focused on business solutions and is President of The Cove Group, Inc. (a management consulting firm). She has coached scientists to professional athletes and entrepreneurs to artists on how to improve their communication in the workplace and at home resulting in advancement of careers, improved leadership skills, more effective teams and deeper relationships. http://michelleydrake.com

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