The Project50 (Reinventing Work): Fifty Ways to Transform Every "Task" into a Project That Matters! [Hardcover]

The aim of this book is to make us "believe that work can be cool. That the work matters." The reason? "Work - yours and mine - as we know it today will be reinvented in the next ten years." Perhaps you believe this, but I do not. Yes, we can make work and, in this case, projects more interesting. Tom Peters comes up with a list of 50 ways how to do this. The list is split up in four parts: (1) Create; (2) Sell; (3) Implement; and (4) Exit. Each of the 50 ways raised consists of a short introduction, the main point ("the nub"), the impact, and some examples and quotes. Most of the 50 ways are quite interesting, but they could have been cut down to some 25.

I always feel disappointed when I have to write a negative review, but this time I have no choice. Tom Peters is a famous management guru and an excellent motivational speaker. I feel that he tries to bring his famous energy from his seminars across by using plenty of capitals, wild colors, abbreviations, and exclamation marks. But it just does not work (for me). There are some interesting points, but he would have been better by producing a video of his seminars or writing a proper book - like 'In Search of Excellence' (1982) - on projects. For people interested in projects and project management there is plenty of choice elsewhere. Although the book is small and consists of only 200 pages, the book is not that simple to read due to its format and structure.

Either Peters is onto something, or we are all fools for treating him like he is. What I believe is that he has inserted himself into business speak as one of our principal formulators of vocabulary to dress up our normal drudgery as something more than it is.

Peters pumps businessmen up, flatters their vanities, and sends them back to the real work with a new vocabulary of "change agents," "WoW projects," and innumerable other expressions of similar banality. He tells them that what they are doing is significant and interesting, and that they can make every project into a fantiastical thing that will change the workd as well as enhance their careers. This boggles the mind, particularly if you have read it more than once in such puffed up venues as Fast Company and Wired, which I believe bring the the profession of journalism to the crudest boosterism, akin to the promoters of primitive Western cities in the 19C America.

In Project 50, Peters offers "fifty ways to transform every 'task' into a project that matters." They range from "reframing" the task as it was posed (make it revolutionary) to selling it succinctly ("metaphor time!") to implementing it ("celebrate failure"!! as a learning experince and as a useful exercise of thinking "crazy") to Exiting ("Seed your freaks into the mainstream"!). If this does not want to make you vomit, try reading it straight through. Doesn't it make you cringe?

And yet.

In my education work with managers whom I sincerely admire and who are undoubtedly highly intelligent and savvy, they gobble this stuff up and use it. While they disdain much of the ridiulous in Peters' vocabulary (the "nub", etc.), they find it profitable to discuss these ideas and it inspires them to change. Thus, I must conclude that there is something is all this hype, something useful that gets pulled out and applied. I just wish that it didn't seem so trivial and silly, so over the top for people who consider themselves writers. I saw a group of extremely bright people wave this book like it was Mao's Red Book durin the cultural revolution. It was stupefying.

So I must say: this book is useful. I make money from it too. And it changes behavior, at least in the activities that I have seen as an education professional. Thus, I must recommend it with a grain of salt. Don't get carried away, but don't have too closed a mind either.