Finally, we can check-off chapter 3.  Yay!

Another new member this week, Mike Nelson.  All the nagging over the last few months has finally paid off

We spent a majority of the time this week on applying GTD project methodology for an internal super-secret internal initiative so we can’t talk much about that here on the blog.  It was a great exercise especially in identifying the vision/outcome of our initiative.

We discussed the last “Next Actions” stage for a few minutes after a brief chat on the 4th stage “Organizing”.

Look out for the mindmap for chapter 4 over the next few days and plan to attend the next meeting on September 7th.  I personally think these are getting more fun every time we meet!

Welcome to our newest member, Elizabeth!

this time we talked mostly about the vision/outcome stage of GTP’s project planning model.  Of course when Ganesh is involved and we are talking about vision, Steve Jobs comes up several times in various contexts.  We all agreed that 4 or 5 failures are natural before success comes knocking on the door.

Nothing will ever be accomplished unless one envisions the outcome in the form of “what success would look, sound and feel like”.  We have to give it up to the lottery-chasers since they have a clear vision of winning millions and retiring on a Caribbean Island…. however, far-fetched the chances of winning might be!

We also briefly covered my favorite topic of “Brainstorming”.  We once again discussed the basic rules of brainstorming as laid out by David Allen:

• no judging, challenging, evaluating or criticizing
• go for quantity, not quality
• no idea is a bad idea!

An interesting conversation thread started around when to stop brainstorming and switch to the next stage (organizing).  the general agreement was that the leader has to bite the bullet and guide the project when ideas stop flowing as fast and are yield lesser and lesser value.  And so I got my chance to remind my golden rule “Perfect is the enemy of good enough”