Joyful Projects - the Secret to Real Excellence

For our final episode, let’s look at how to pull this all together…joy, excellence, communication, IDEAL.  And, while those thoughts are rolling around, let’s listen with fresh perspective  to the most powerful Sermon of all human history.

Let’s take a minute to summarize it all together – this epic movie. We’ve laid some foundations, and weaved our story line that helps you lead a project, to lead a team that ideally transforms and idea into a reality. This will help tie together what we talked about in the first few episode…sort of a cliff note version on how to see how cool it is when we apply this approach to take Sunday’s message into Mondays mission…and ideally lead a project with joy and excellence.

The project is done, and your team is disbanding. You knew all along this was the natural course this epic movie would play out. Your job as leader isn’t just to say “good luck, hope your next job goes well.” You are their key reference, you are their key networking contact. Be proactive. Write the referrals and recommendations. Help them to see all the great achievements and accomplishments to put on their resume. Because for most of us, this project isn’t a one and done – it’s a stepping stone. Make sure that stepping stone isn’t just a tripping haz...

Nobody likes to recreate the wheel right? Do you like having to learn all over again what you learned in a previous project? Probably not. Do you wish someone before you had taken the time to make a notebook of the tricks of the trade? Probably yes. Now you’re the leader and you can make it so that others will learn from your experience. This is more valuable than leaving a legacy; this is about serving those who will do it in the future in a most selfless way. Let’s look at some ways to pull this off.

It’s now almost time to say we are done… our idea is now a reality. The team is taking a deep breath and the customer is delighted. But as a leader, we have some very important actions still to do. Let’s start by being lifted up.

Last episode we talked about achieving our goal. Absolutely necessary. This episode, we are going to look at the important; accomplishing desired, maybe even delightful, outcomes. We are in the part of our drama where the idea to reality transformation impacts the hearts and minds of our team and our customer.

We are on a journey to transform an idea into a reality. That reality has both tangible and intangible dimensions. Let’s talk the tangible part – what actually got built, created, transformed. In most project management books, this is the focus. For us, it’s only the first half of being an IDEAL project, but it’s the necessary half. In our next episode, we’ll talk about the important half.

Yes! We are moving from words to actions, plans to production, thinking to doing. And, my goodness, there’s a lot going on! Back to back meetings, along with a deluge of emails and voicemails – enough to feel like we can’t keep our head above water, let alone lead our team. So, let’s make sure we do the leading things and the managing things well. It’s time to take a hint from General Dwight Eisenhower on how he did this as the Allied Commander.

Encourage. What a beautiful word; what a beautiful gift to actually be able to do that. Let’s continue our look into how we can truly encourage, to give strength, to unleash inner joy. In this episode, let’s look how God has encouraged those He sent on Mission and then let’s see how we can learn from the perfect examples that God has provided.

We continue to transform fear, anxiety into joy. Remember our phrase from Mother Theresa? Joy is strength. How cool of a calling is this? As leaders, we transform those worries, those unknowns, those concerns that weaken us and we transform them into our strength. This is definitely not about trite slogans and being a rah rah cheerleader. Those are ok, but they won’t do the real transforming of anxiety into joy. Let’s do a little look at Jesus’ beautiful discourse at the Last Supper. We will spend most of this podcast on some pragmatic ways to encourage.