As part of the Find Your Great Work book, I’ve been doing a series of interviews called (unimaginatively enough) The Great Work Interview series.

Partially inspired by TED, I’ve been reaching out to cool and funky people who I think might have something interesting to say.

This week alone I’ve spoken to/will be speaking to

Barbara Coloroso, parenting expect

John McWade, founder of the very cool design magazine, Before + After

Andrew Kaufman, author of one of the best books ever, All My Friends Are Superheroes

Mark Dowds, a stunningly smart entreprenuer and founder of Brain Park

Scott Allen, expert on the power of social networking

Ed Cohen, head of learning for Satyam (one of the biggest companies you’ve never heard of)

Is that not amazing?  You can imagine the pleasure and learning I get from sitting down with these folks and asking them some questions.

And how did I get such an impressive roster of folk?  I asked them.

Who do YOU want to speak to?  And how will you get in touch with them to start that conversation?

ZenHabits is one of the best blogs around - and I’m lucky enough to be interviewing the guy behind the blog, Leo, as one of the Great Work interviews.

This is Leo’s latest posting, and it’s full of wisdom about how the old rules of working just don’t work any more.

I’m hard pressed to pick which one of the four points I like the most, but here’s something that resonated loud and clear for me today:

4. Don’t multi-task — multi-project and single-task.

Old school: Multi-tasking is productive. Juggling tasks shows how productive you are, says old school productivity. I’ve written enough about multi-tasking for you to know where I stand on that.

Productivity 2.0: Multi-project and single-task. While I won’t go on once again about single-tasking — focusing on one task at a time to be more effective — I will say that multi-projecting has its uses. Let’s say…

(you can read the rest here)

What do you think?  What do you need to change in how you work to do more Great Work?

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I was talking with my coach Ernest the other day about building and refining the team that supports Box of Crayons.  He helped me notice that I’m looking for three types of people, depending on the work that’s required.

The first type is for “out-choring” - people to do the administrative, process-driven work that can suck up time and keep you busy.  This is transactional stuff, and you want reliable and you want as low cost as possible.  I’ve just rediscovered eLance, and that’s proving a blessing.  (For instance, I use my eLance partners to manage my 200+ invitations to LinkedIn that I receive every week).

Second, people who interact with the world on your behalf and who manage processes as well being one of the voices for the brand.  These are folks whose “vibe” is important and who you can trust to speak as you would speak - if not in the exact words, then the exact tone.

And then, finally, you need people who bring their own creative magic to the mix.  We’re lucky to have a few such folk supporting Box of Crayons …

Robert, who’s designed our first flash movie and who’s hard at work on our next one about Find Your Great Work.

Kathryn and Charlotte, who are the brains (and muscle) behind our websites.  (By the way, we’ve just launched the new look of www.BoxOfCrayons.biz - what do you think?)

Ana, who’s designed our ebooks and is designing Find Your Great Work.

What makes them special?  I think two things

Solid as a rock.  They have processes and structures so they keep their promises and deliver what they said they would.

Light as a feather.  They understand your brief better than you do.  When they present their thoughts, you think:  Wow, I could never have thought of that.

Working with exceptional people like this means that I can stay focused on my own Great Work.

And, they’re wonderful training for me.  I’m now increasingly intolerant of working with people who don’t have systems that work and can’t keep that promises.  And equally, of who can only deliver to the brief without adding their own magic to the mix.

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One thing that I’m finding cool about the Find Your Great Work book is that it’s prompting me to reach out to people I otherwise wouldn’t.  I’ve been getting in touch with thinkers I admire, writers I dig and cool people I just happen to come across where I think there might be a connection.

Here’s how it typically goes.

I find someone I think is cool and think “I’d love to get in touch with them.”

I find their email and send them an email.

I hear nothing for a week or so.

I send them the same email, but this time with “[resend]” in the subject line.

And often, very often, I get a reply.

Two things I take from this, both important in helping stay the Great Work course.

=> Silence does not equal No.  (It’s just silence).

=> Just a little persistence pays off.  (Don’t give up just yet).

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Hugh MacLeod at gapingvoid found his moment of fame drawing cartoons on a back of a business card - and has since parlayed that into a useful and entertaining blog musing on marketing, individuality and what it takes to do Great Work.

He’s been writing an thoughtful series on Living on the Edges and is talking directly to those of us wrestling with how to do more Great Work.  Here’s a couple of the points he makes:

4. The Herd. When sheep flock together, in order to protect the collective, the strong end up in the middle of the flock; the old, infirm and weak end up on the outside of the flock, leaving them easy pickin’s for any predators who may be nearby. If you read Mark Earl’s fabulous book, “Herd”, you soon realize that human beings aren’t that different. For all the heroic individualism Western society likes to idealize [almost to the point of fetishism], humans are surprisingly “Herd-like” in their behavior.

Just as sheep move to the center of the flock for purely survival reasons, so do human beings. It’s why we wear khakis and join tennis clubs. But some of us move to “the edges” for the exact same reason- Survival. “If we stay in the middle, we’re just going to get creamed like everybody else, once the market moves on.” I don’t think “Edgelings” consciously choose to be this way- like every other mammal out there, they just want to get on with their business without being eaten by wolves. Declarations like “Live on the edges or not at all” come after the fact- as Mark Earls would say, it’s more about justifying past behavior, rather than ensuring future behavior.

6. I’m agnostic. I see both “The Edges” and “The Middle” two sides of the same coin. Like the circle’s center and circumference, both need the other.

11. People often ask me, “How do you stay inspired over the long haul?” My answer: “By working hard”. Bliss through Toil, Baby. It’s all good.

You can read the rest of what Hugh has to say here and here.

And while you’re at it, you should also check out his How To Be Creative series.

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