Three Years Project Shrink Blog
July 16, 2010 @ Project Shrink from Bas de Baar
The Project Shrink is three years old this week. July 15th 2007 I created this blog and called it “Project Shrink”, because I wanted to emphasize “human behavior” in projects and I have difficulty pronouncing “Project Sociologist”.
In 3 years I wrote 468 blog posts. Although perhaps not always obvious, all posts are based upon a mission, powered by my specific passion.
The mission of The Project Shrink is to make global, virtual and multi cultural projects work locally in such a way that they provide a genuine contribution towards a sustainable global society.
Yeah. I know.
During a trip through India in 2008 I read Thomas Friedman’s book “Hot, Flat and Crowded”. In it, among thousand of other things, he describes a company operating in India, that changed the way I look at how what we do as Project Managers can contribute to global problems. Friedman describes a call center in India that handles telephone inquiries for US corporations. But instead of being located in one of the large cities like Mumbai or Madras, this company is located in rural villages.
The original inhabitants of the village who got an education in the city are now able to return to their village because there are good jobs. The employees are extremely loyal to the company, income of the villagers is going up and the level of eduction is rising. If you have nothing to eat, do you think you care about environmental issues? But having an income, education, a job you love, living in the town you love surrounded by your family you start caring about the future.
Translating this to IT: we have the jobs, we have the technology to perform this partly location independent. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we can make it work? And this isn’t just about India.
It is about reducing urbanization and its heavy toll on the environment (no commute is no pollute).
It is about a more healthy (sustainable) distribution of wealth.
It is about improving education in general.
But this is also about getting rid of certain things. We cannot afford having unmotivated people, extensive corporate politics or bloated organization with an enormous amount of overhead.
As project people we would like to see the roadmap now. The recipe for success.
Sorry. There isn’t any. No single solution. No silver bullet.
With every approach there is this “it depends”. Circumstances. What might be the best solution in one case, might be disastrous in another.
There is this ALWAYS this big “IT DEPENDS…”
Education. Good. Books. Fantastic. Best practices. Awesome.
But, for inspiration purposes only.
I know that the knowledge and intelligence you need is locked in you and your team.
You need fun and creativity to get it out. Not compliance and punishment.
And that, lucky us, is no rocket science.
Image by Tony Crescibene.
Bas de Baar is an independent consultant based in the Netherlands. He uniquely combines over a decade of project and team leadership with nearly a decade online presence in the area of Project Leadership in a global and virtual world.
Three Years Project Shrink Blog
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