How many times have you been involved in a project where no one seems to take action until a deadline looms– then you have to manage the actions?

Have you had to lead a project to get the information needed for a proposal or a report to management?

When I speak to groups and ask these questions, almost everyone in the room raises their hands. What strikes me as funny is this: if I took everyone with a raised hand and put them in project teams, who would follow? There would be too many leaders!

Seriously, the number of natural leaders in any given group is small. Most people want to be led and do not mind passing ownership and responsibility to someone else — especially in risky situations. Ownership will be avoided when people have nothing to risk, too.

Recently, I was involved in a project with three different areas of a firm - sales, delivery, and a technical team — all involved in building a proposal for services to a prospect. The only group at risk if no business was landed was the Sales team. If the client accepted the proposal the other departments would be at risk. For weeks, the Sales team let the other departments know about the upcoming proposal, its deadlines and did everything they could to make sure there was no last minute rush to get things done.

You know how this ends up. At the 11th hour, the other departments decided to participate in the process of putting together the proposal. The end result is a half-baked proposal and inter-departmental resentment.

When any leader considers the concept of ownership, s/he must figure out what drives all people involved to have some sense of ownership. Without this sense, no one really cares about the project. Team compensation and advancement must be based on measurable metrics. One of these measurements should be “# of projects managed to successful completion”. In my example, why not create a metric for “proposals delivered prior to deadline”.

It is also very easy for people to get caught up in daily tasks and not look at the big picture. When planning compensation and looking at the type of projects your teams execute, make sure the metrics are measurable. Otherwise, people can avoid taking responsibility.

Do you need to be unique? Will it give you a real competitive edge?

In my work with various companies, I find some companies who concentrate on unique offerings to clients. Do you really need to be unique to be successful?

The answer is “No” if your definition of success does not involve being unique. Here’s a question to think about: are the owners of Papa John’s pizza places unsuccessful? Not the ones I know. There’s nothing unique about Papa John’s pizza. The owners of the franchises make good money, enjoy ownership, and have ample free time.

Instant oil changes, dry cleaners, gyms, cereal, concrete delivery, and the list goes on. They do not need to be unique and are not sexy, but all of the owners/executives I know in these industries make great money and enjoy what they do.

If you want to define an industry, being unique is very important. Consider iPods. Apple owns the portable media device market. What about Starbucks?

Being unique is nothing without marketing it. This is where the “sexy” comes into play. Emotions come into play, too.

If you want people to feel something when they think of your company/product/service, then you need to be unique and sexy. Without these two components, you should change your strategy to get into an industry that does not need these two and has less risk for you.

Ever read something that has a profound effect on your thinking? I’ve almost finished Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill, by Mattieu Ricard and it is a must-read book.

Ricard is a Buddhist monk, but the book is not about Buddhism. It is about defining what happiness is, why we struggle with it so much, and what to do about it. He blends his personal experiences with scientific data.

In my own life experiences, I’ve found false happiness and true happiness. We all want things and everyone is familiar with the “you’ll never have enough” cliche. Ricard dives into these concepts and dissects them to help one understand true happiness.

There is no step by step guide to determining what you should do to achieve true happiness. The book gives you plenty of things to contemplate and advice on how to start though.

After reading this book, I plan to buy his others. For those of you who travel quite a bit, its a “read and return” book found in the Paradies shops in various airports. I won’t return this one though.