{"id":2167,"date":"2009-05-05T04:13:24","date_gmt":"2009-05-05T11:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=2167"},"modified":"2019-08-07T14:31:31","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T21:31:31","slug":"the-politics-of-inspiration-and-shame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=2167","title":{"rendered":"The Politics of Inspiration and Shame"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"election2008\"As a project leader, part of your job is to inspire people to persevere in pursuit of seemingly impossible goals.\u00a0 In my work, it’s not part of my job . . . that’s pretty much all I do.\u00a0 A decade leading projects was the perfect preparation for this work.\u00a0 Lately I’ve been spending about half of my time traveling from the Silicon Valley to Japan, leading a team of consultants in delivering programs that we loosely refer to as “Global Leadership and Management Development” workshops, that are designed to equip participants with the ability to achieve what seems impossible, but is merely difficult.\u00a0 Part of this program is for participants to tackle a project that they believe is highly unlikely, or nearly impossible, but if it WERE possible would transform their company for the better.\u00a0 We tell them to choose projects that are too dangerous to tackle in their normal jobs, ones that could spell career suicide for them if they attempted them and failed, and would bring shame on their families for generations to come in that unfortunate circumstance.\u00a0 (Yes, I really say that to our valued Japanese clients.\u00a0 I’m kind of joking, but anyone who has championed a risky breakthrough project knows that it’s not entirely in jest.\u00a0 And regardless of any positive contribution he made, every major political disaster since Ex-US President Nixon’s 1970’s demise has had a name ending in “-gate” applied to it.) And then they work on these “impossible” projects.<\/p>\n

Regardless of what you think about the current government in America, it might interest you to know how globally-minded business people in Japan responded to Obama’s election.\u00a0 You see, in our workshops, each project team engaged in “tackling the impossible” gets a chance to pick their team name.\u00a0 Usually they’re in the grip of a strange mixture of excitement and paralyzing fear when they do this, because they are just startingt to realize that they will actually have to choose and work on a project that they believe is almost certainly doomed to failure from the start.\u00a0 As a result they tend to choose names that capture the essence of this intoxicating emotional mix . . . names like “Mission Possible”, “Trail Blazing Dragons” (a tongue twister even for a native English speaker), or “Team Breakthrough”.\u00a0 But something amazing started happening last October just before the US presidential elections.\u00a0 Almost every group that we worked with had at least one team that chose a name something like “Obama”, “Team Obama”, or “Yes We Can!”\u00a0 One team even insisted that the other dozen people in the workshop repeatedly throw up their hands and chant “Yes we can!” whenever they made a presentation, in particular when they asked “Do you think we can achieve our project goals?”<\/p>\n

Wow.\u00a0 I realized that there were many people who felt strongly about Obama in the US, one way or the other, but I was totally amazed to see how far-reaching Obama’s inspirational message was.\u00a0 Now, I’ve been doing this work with the employees of Japanese companies, including people from the US, Europe, South America, and all over Asia, not just Japan, for over 3 years.\u00a0 With dozens of teams choosing names in all that time I’ve never before encountered one including a US president, so this was quite a surprise to me.\u00a0 I can tell you that these people didn’t choose this name because they had a thorough understanding of, and respect for, Obama’s policies or accomplishments.\u00a0 They chose him as their inspiration because . . . well, he’s inspiring!\u00a0 And let me tell you, when people are facing seemingly insurmountable odds, they seek inspiration.<\/p>\n

Are you providing inspiration to your team?\u00a0 Would any team up to their hips in challenges choose your name, or some wit or wisdom you’ve dispensed, as part of their team name to inspire them?\u00a0 What could you do that would be authentic, meaningful, and worthy of that kind of immortalization?\u00a0 That’s the elephant in the room for me these days.\u00a0 Heck, sometimes I am too tired to even inspire myself, let alone anyone else.\u00a0 Sometimes I just go to bed thinking “Gosh, if only I can get 10 hours of sleep I can do what I’ve committed to tomorrow.”\u00a0 If you’re a project leader with more irons in the fire than you can handle, and just barely squeaking through your day, what’s left to nourish your team’s need to be inspired?<\/p>\n

OK, I know, it’s “touchy feely” stuff.\u00a0 And, as Zig Ziglar taught me, “Inspiration doesn’t last.\u00a0 That’s why we need to do it daily.” . . . but I’d sure like to know what inspires you, and what you do to inspire others.\u00a0 Me, I’m hanging by a thread here waiting for your answer!\u00a0 Make it a good one.<\/p>\n

– Kimberly Wiefling, Founder, Wiefling Consulting, LLC<\/a> and author, Scrappy Project Management<\/a> (Japanese translation due out July 1, 2009)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a project leader, part of your job is to inspire people to persevere in pursuit of seemingly impossible goals.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,19],"tags":[81,586,1370,31],"class_list":["post-2167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-global","tag-inspiration","tag-japan","tag-leadership","tag-motivation"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14241,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167\/revisions\/14241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}