The Project 50 (Reinventing Work): Fifty Ways to Transform Every "Task" into a Project That Matters!

Does your work matter? Do you transform mundane tasks into "WOW Projects!"? And, most important, do you consider projects "dynamic, stimulating, a major bond builder with co-workers, a source of buzz among end-users, and ... inspiring, exhausting, hot, cool, sexy, where everyone else wants to be"? If not, consider reading this enthusiastic project primer, which joins The Brand You50 and The Professional Service Firm50 in Tom Peters's list-filled Reinventing Work series.

Stressing the importance of following a project from start to finish, Peters breaks the WOW Project (also known as the "Way Cool" project, by the way) into four stages--create, sell, implement, and exit--and 50 lists. No. 24 (titled "Work on BUZZ ... all the time!") recommends making a stir about the "WOW-worthy project," showing off your team's success with buttons, mugs, and T-shirts. Shameless? Perhaps. But if the project is truly worthy, then "parading your team's spunk is a matchless sales/marketing--not to mention morale-building--ploy."

Peters--who communicates in lists, one-word sentences, bold, capitalized, and half-tone text, parenthetical asides with jumpy punctuation, and more than a few interjections of "WOW!" and "Way cool!"--is not for everyone. Mellow readers may want, instead, to check out Eric Verzuh's The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management. But project managers seeking to shake up mundane assignments will find plenty of original, easy-to-implement ideas in this guide to getting things done. --Rob McDonald