Oops!

The picture is compliments of www.despair.com and for those of you who have not discovered it yet, it's a treasure trove of humor for those of us who have become a bit cynical to the culture of Successories lip service.  The reason for sharing this is to introduce you to a fun and informative blog.  Michael Krigsman was kind enough to backtrack to Carpe Factum this weekend from a recent post.  His blog, Rearranging the Deck Chairs (think Titanic) is a fun blogosphere romp through what is wrong with projects today.  Michael has some great insights, and I'm glad he introduced himself.  Have a great weekend.

Technorati Tags: despair.com, Michael Krigsman, project failure, Rearranging the Deck Chairs

Resurrecting the Habit

After an extended hiatus caused by the realities of life, I decided it was time to get back into the habit of working out.  My workout schedule and routine, when set, are fairly consistent.  Wake up at 4:30, dressed and to the Y by 4:55, 100 ab crunches, 40 minutes on the exercise bike, come home, do the power cords, then get the kids and myself ready for our respective days.  Hence, my body has had to adjust to a new sleep schedule and relearn my old workout routine.  The two words that best describe my current existence are "ow" and "yawn."

(By the way, kudos to Rick, Cecilia, Steve, Mary, and the other folks working out at the Y at that ungodly hour for your warm reception back and your encouragement this week.  It's been great seeing all of you again and catching up.)

Project rigor is also a habit, and it can be a painful habit to adjust, but it's equally rewarding in the end when followed faithfully.  I was on a project a few years ago where I was working for an alarming scattered manager who informed me that she did not want me to write a weekly status report, monthly would do.  While I protested, she made it quite clear that it was not time she wanted "wasted" - there were other things to do.  Against my better judgment, I followed her lead.  When things "went south" on the project, she had me over a barrel as the needed documentation was not there.  I started doing weekly status reports as part of the project recovery and she terminated my contract as the frequent documentation surfaced the fact that she was the bottleneck of the project's problems (which explained her earlier resistance).  Oh well.  It was a good lesson learned.

Artifacts such as status reports, project plans, and issues logs are the lifeblood of a well-run project.  If your project is fully staffed with Carpe Factum poster children who are all over-achieving accomplishment-mongers and who trust and respect each other, then you can come and talk to me about relaxing the project rigor.  Now, where did I leave my heating pad?  Ow!

Technorati Tags: YMCA, workout, project management, status report, lessons learned

What's up .doc ?

"A little bunny rabbit of my very own!!  I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him and hold him and call him George." -Abominable Snowman

As a project manager, one of the frustrations I have is attempting to find a needed document at the right time.  When you have 100 people on a project team, you have 1,000,000 different naming conventions for any given file.  The most commonly asked question I hear in project meetings is "What did you name that file again???"

Generally speaking, I've found some simple naming conventions for files which have worked for me for years:

1. Start each file with YYYYMMDD (Year Month Day).  Since today is April 27, any files I create today will start with 20060427 File Name.ext.  This allows me to link file management with my planner and facilitates the timing of file creation as well as version control over multiple days.
2. Name each file intuitively and completely.  So many people are stuck on the old 8 character microsoft naming conventions.  If this person creates a test plan for user acceptance testing for the manufacturing division, the file name may look like TSPLUATM.doc.  GRRRRRRRR.  Don't make the rest of us interpret your short hand.  20060427 Manufacturing User Acceptance Test Plan.doc is preferred.
3. Use folders and directories to group the files in an organized fashion that makes sense.  Don't use a single folder or directory that becomes a community information dumping ground.
4. Establish these standards NO LATER THAN the completion of the planning phase.  Your team will thank you.

Just some thoughts during the middle of the week.

Technorati Tags: project management, documentation, standards

Balancing Act

I stumbled upon a new blog this weekend.  Jamie Fristrom's Game Dev Blog had a great post.  He was responding to an article in an open letter about the balancing act between development and project management.

First, Fristrom is a darn fine writer.  He makes a very passionate case to anybody who has to balance between creative development (be it a new product, software, advertising campaign, etc.) and the carpe factum of project management.

Second, he makes a great point that needs to be expressed more in project management circles.  Project managers love to talk about best practices.  We love to use templates.  We get geeky about the latest release of MS Project.  But sometimes, in the face of a creative endeavor under tight timelines, we have to throw caution to the wind and just go with the flow.  We'll call it Dynamically Fluid Carpe Factum (DFCF).

Case in point, a few years ago, I was charged with creating a training rollout program for HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).  For those of you who know about HIPAA, it's the most boring legislation known to humankind.  The challenge presented by my project executives:  Make the training consistent (rolled out to 3000 employees); Get it done in 10 weeks with $XXX budget; and, Oh by the way, make it entertaining and creative.

Jinkies, Shaggy!

Working with the project team, we discussed options.  I let them in on a little secret about myself:  closet Cops fan.  Hence, the idea was born to make our otherwise-boring HIPAA video look like an episode of Cops.  What came next was two months of flurry and frenzy like nothing else.  This project geek merely provided the executives with some high level milestones on the project plan - everything else was managed by flipcharts and post it notes.  We met all of the objectives, but to do so we had to throw out some of the day-to-day project rigor.  Script writing, casting, wardrobe, filming, editing, distribution, coordinating with the local police department... and I'd never done any video production before.  The team had a vision and we worked together to pull it off.

Is flying by the seat of your pants recommended in all project management cases?  Hardly.  But when faced with an urgent creative endeavor, the PM types and the creative types need to notch up the communication a few levels.  Instead of fighting each other over methodology, the end result needs to be the focus.  This hard-core PM learned that the easy way through a hard project.

Read Fristrom.  He's got some great insights.  Made me think and remember a few things.

Technorati Tags: Jamie Fristrom, gamedevblog, HIPAA, Training Video, Video Production, Cops, Project Management, Creativity, Dynamically Fluid Carpe Factum

Them Does Real Good

My wife and I always went to Missouri over the Independence Day holiday to visit her grandmother.  While Grandma Miller was lively and entertaining enough, one of the side benefits of the visit was that fireworks are legal in Missouri (they are not in Iowa, however).  On the way to Grandma's house, a stop to a local fireworks stand was inevitable.  On one particular visit, I was curious about the performance of a particular explosive and decided to ask the shopkeeper his opinion.  (For those of you who are currently nervous about the thought of a project manager playing with fire, be afraid.  Be very afraid.)  I held up the firework in question and asked about lighting effects, noise, etc.  His response:  "Them does real good."  When he was out of earshot, I turned to my wife, the English teacher, and asked, "How does one go 0-for-4 on a 4-word sentence?"

Truly, I'm not a grammar cop.  I make occasional errors (trying to correct them before they become public, but not always successfully).  Nevertheless, how we communicate is as important as (in many cases, more than) what we communicate.  Grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word choice speak volumes about you... and me.  Mike Wagner is an expert on branding for companies, but his principles apply to individuals as well.  Your communication skills mark your invitation, relevance, and truth to the receivers.  David Lorenzo is an expert in career intensity and managing the image that professionals convey to those around them.  Mark True is an expert in personal story telling, ensuring that every element of your identity conveys your personal and/or professional story correctly.

It astounds me that there are so-called professionals that have trouble framing a simple sentence, that there are project managers for whom English must be a second language (but I'm left dumbfounded to figure out what their first language might be), that there are colleagues who truly have English as a second language who communicate infinitely better than "the natives."

I was once on a project with a self-proclaimed-well-educated-better-than-you-could-ever-hope-to-be project manager, but in speaking and in presentations, he kept referring to "project governess" (he meant to say, project governance).  Instead of his conveying the idea of best practices and standard operating procedures, I kept getting this image of Mary Poppins with an Uzi and an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent.  It made me giggle (inside voice only), but it also cost him "street cred."  And when a project manager loses credibility, watch out.

Thoughts for the day:  How can you improve your project communications to others?  Are people commenting about your grammar and spelling behind your back?  Do you have a trusted colleague who can coach you and assist you and proofread your deliverables?  Is your Carpe Factum being undermined by poor communication skills?

Technorati Tags: Project Communication, grammar, Mike Wagner, David Lorenzo, Mark True, Mary Poppins, Personal Branding

For Whom the Bull Tells

First things first:  My apologies to Ernest Hemingway fans for the title word play.

My wife teaches high school English and social studies, and she was bemoaning the dismal performance of her students' Hemingway presentations today.  Seems there were quite a few high schoolers who thought they could present on "Papa" without actually reading him first.  She's got a pretty keen sense for "bull" and she could tell when it occurs.  Too bad for the students who thought they could fake their way through.

How often do we catch ourselves tempted to shortcut our way through our projects?  How frequently do we catch others cutting corners on project quality?  How many status reports have stats that lead the readers to believe that more has been done than has actually been accomplished?  Carpe Factum does not support "faking it" - accomplishments mean done... and done well.

David Lorenzo of Career Intensity had a great post last week on Momentum.  His five steps really don't allow for "faking it":

1. Plan Your Beginning
2. Schedule Your Start
3. Do Something Each Day To Move Toward Completion and Check Them Off the List
4. Talk About the Project with Others
5. Plan To Celebrate Completion

You can read the details in his blog along with numerous other brilliant thoughts.  I like these steps.  Simple accountability.  No room for bull.  The only "talk" is about tangible accomplishment.

Thoughts:  Where are you tempted to "fake it"?  Where do you think others are trying to "fake it"?  How can you heighten the accountability and cut through the bull?

Technorati Tags: Ernest Hemingway, Faking It, Accountability, David Lorenzo, Career Intensity

My Five-Headed Beast

I was once on a project where I had five project sponsors... yup, count them, FIVE.  I affectionately referred to them as my five-headed beast.  Hanging onto their leash was another story (you see, I'm the owner of a snuggly Shih Tzu; taking five-headed beasts for a walk is generally not my forte).  Sponsor 1 was a C-level executive who controlled all the shots.  Sponsors 2 and 3 basically did what Sponsor 1 told them.  Sponsor 4 tried to filter communication between the PM and Sponsor 1.  Sponsor 5 spent much time attempting to diffuse political situations and attempt to coach me on dealing with Sponsor 1.  Suffice it to say, there was an overabundance of agendas and a lack of accountability.  Ironically, each of them had the potential to be a pleasant and effective individual... it was only as a group that things seem to fall apart.

Let me say this firmly:  Each project should have one and only one project sponsor, who holds the final accountability for the project.  No more.  No fewer.

Scott Berkun recently posted on 10 things you won't hear a VP say.  Despite a passionately voiced objection from a real VP, the themes come through loud and clear and honest.  Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to villify all executives, but there's a reason why executive support is at the top of success/failure factors in the Standish Group's CHAOS report statistics.

At some point, executives and staff alike will need to realize that we're all on the same team.  In some organizations and cultures, that is pure utopia.  In others, it is the status quo and isn't given a second thought.  How well do your executives "play in the project sandbox" with you and your team?  How well do you play with them?  What are you doing to close the gap?

Technorati Tags: Multiple Sponsors, Project Sponsor, Accountability, CHAOS Report, Standish Group, Scott Berkun, Ego

Butt Blinkers

Generally speaking, I think the human body is an amazing invention, and I'm thankful to my Creator for the overall design (well, OK, I know I have a washboard stomach under there somewhere; somebody just left the laundry on it).  There's only one question of anatomy I have for my Maker when I meet Him on Judgment Day:  Why didn't you add "butt blinkers"?

I get very frustrated when I'm walking behind somebody and they suddenly veer in front of me or come to a screeching stop, causing me to brake in frantic pedestrian style to avoid collision.  Let's face it:  If we were in cars, we'd be exchanging insurance information by this point.  Instead, if they have any courtesy whatsoever, they might grin sheepishly and apologize.  Most of the time, they are oblivious... or worse yet, rude.  I just think that God, in His infinite wisdom, could have designed blinkers on our posteriors that are hardwired to our brains, just to signal our intentions.  Of course, this suggestion creates a plethora of other issues, further confirming why He is God, and I'm very much not.

The issue of setting expectations, of communicating changes in expectations, and of making decisions based on expectations has been hitting my radar screen recently.  Patti Digh, one of my favorite blogging philosophers, had an insightful post about change and setting expectations in life.  DJ Dunkerley posted a rather amusing tongue-in-cheek assessment about project success and failure based on how much you know about tasks and how well expectations are set.

In project management, we're told that 90% of a project manager's time is to be spent communicating with various stakeholders.  I would add a corollary to that:  90% of the communication time is invested in constantly setting and resetting expectations.  Nobody likes to be blindsided... by unexpected project consequences or by walking-impaired invididuals with no butt blinkers.  Even bad news is a bit more palatable when we have an adequate heads up.  How well are you doing at setting (and resetting) expectations???

Technorati Tags: Human Anatomy, Butt Blinkers, Setting Expectations, Project Management, Project Communication, Patti Digh, DJ Dunkerley

Project Management Family Feud

I was reading Mary Schmidt's recent post on the Family Feud TV game show and how she applied it to marketing.  For those of you who have not yet discovered her blog, it's a worthwhile visit.  She is spot on about Richard Dawson - his era was the best that show had to offer.  The show really is all about context and association, two things that are necessary to a project manager, but yet which too few of us allow ourselves to do on a regular basis. Anyway, the idea of listing the top five of any category really got me thinking:  what if we had project managers as contestants on the show?  I can just hear Richard belting out the following:  100 project managers surveyed and the top five answers are on the board...

• What five things would a project manager most like to have during a tense steering committee meeting?
• Which five meetings would a project manager most likely keep on his or her schedule?
• What five skillsets would a project manager look for in virtually every team member?
• If you were on a sinking ship with your entire project team and infrastructure (yeah, yeah, I know, some of you are thinking, "what do you mean, 'if'?"), what are the five things or people you would be most likely to save to keep your project moving forward?
• What five blogs should every project manager read?

And our survey says... ... ... ???  I'll look forward to your responses.

Technorati Tags: mary schmidt, family feud, richard dawson, project manager, context

A Project Management Fable

Five... four... three... two... one... We Have Liftoff.

The past couple of weeks have been fun for me.  The completion and launch of a new book, a project management fable, have educated me in more ways than I could have ever expected.  My publisher, Tiberius Publications, has a truly dedicated team that's made Race Through the Forest launch like a dream.

Having book in hand, all thoughts now turn toward selling and marketing.  Scott Berkun is a gem.  This project management blogger of bloggers recently posted some of his top lessons learned from his book launch a year ago.  I forwarded his post on to my publisher contact, and I plan on using every pearl of wisdom he put forth.  Even though we're both authors in the project management arena, I don't view him as competition per se, just because our books approach the topic so differently.  I have a true appreciation for what he has accomplished.  For him to share his wisdom with those of us just entering the authoring arena speaks volumes about his character.

Speaking of accomplishment, I guess I'm practicing what I'm preaching.  Carpe Factum.  Seize the accomplishment.  I've been getting a lot of "atta boy" slaps on the back from friends and family recently, and to be honest, it feels a little weird.  I guess that's what happens when you're accomplishing something.  You focus on the goal so hard that actually arriving just seems like such a natural ending that you almost forget what an accomplishment it was to get there.  Twenty-three months (to the day) from the conception of Race Through The Forest to holding the book in my hands.  When my publisher handed me the book, I just sat there dumbfounded for a while, holding it in my hands, turning the pages, looking at it from every angle.  She's known me for over 15 years and bemused with a chuckle that if she'd known that this was what it took to make me utterly speechless, she would have published me years ago.  I like people who can humble me in a good-natured way from time to time.

We now have a plan for getting "buzz" out about the book.  Working the networks.  Blogging.  Getting other people to blog about it.  Promotions.  Book signings.  It's a new chapter in the same project.  Race Through The Forest is a project management fable, but it's really the story within a story, my own personal Midsummer Night's Dream of business writing, of project management, of carpe factum.  Thanks to everyone who supported me the last two years on this project.  Your encouragement and support continue to inspire me.

Technorati Tags: project management fable, race through the forest, carpe factum, accomplishment, book writing, book launch, marketing, buzz

Book Update

NOTE:  Because my publisher and their printer were able to overachieve, Race Through The Forest is now available for ordering (two weeks early).  Happy reading.

Cast of Characters: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (Part 2)

The five characters I mentioned in my last post are the core of Race Through The Forest.  However, no man is an island.  The other characters provide an added touch of reality.

Overa Cheevre - OK, OK, I know I have a thing for creative character names.  However, who doesn't have an over-achiever on their project team (or wish they did)?  However, sometimes there is a vacancy for qualified overachievers.  On a recent project, I was discussing the lack of qualified subject matter experts (SMEs) with a project sponsor.  His reply is that they had known for two years that they had the problem.  Two years of knowing they didn't have qualified people??  In that amount of time, most organizations could train or hire almost any skillset.  They seemed to employ the strategy of hoping an overachiever would magically show up.  The trick to handling over-achievers, when you do have them, is ensuring that they know they are on your team and when you need them.  They tend to be busy, since everybody wants them on their project.

Sammy Stallworth - The procrastinator is one of the nasty villains on any project.  Pick an excuse, any excuse for the delay.  Unfortunately, many project managers don't find out about the procrastinator until it's too late.  The procrastinator loves tasks with long durations so s/he can claim progress all along... then when the deadline approaches, the excuses begin.  Procrastinators may even use valid change control procedures to buy extra time.

Reece S'Orce - We've talked about Reece already... he's our WUHOT.  I'm not going to describe him any further than I already have... but he creates an interesting question for those of you out in the blogosphere:  What is your best WUHOT story?  How did you handle it? 

Technorati Tags: Overachiever, procrastinator, WUHOT, Carpe Factum, Project Management, Resources, Race Through The Forest

Cast of Characters: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (Part 1)

Admission time:  my favorite part of writing is character development.  Mentally giving birth to another being who exists purely because of my imagination is great fun and a great challenge.  Not only does an author have to figure out everything this person does and says within the writing of the book, but also there is an unwritten character development that happens between the lines - all of the background motivations, fears, concerns, relationships, activities, etc. the make the character who s/he is without ever putting it on paper.  With that in mind, here are some of the major characters in Race Through The Forest:

• Barry Tortisse, accountant.  I've always been in awe of accountants.  My personal and business accountant is excruciatingly detailed to the point of driving me to distraction during tax time.  But great accountants are the bastion of carpe factum; they get things done to a level of detail that would make great artists green with envy.  In Race Through The Forest, our accountant Barry has been building spreadsheets and balancing ledgers for years at Forest Industries.  He's a "slow and steady" performer, and people can rely on him to accomplish whatever he is assigned.  Now the reader needs to see if Barry can extrapolate those skills to project management.
• Ben Theer, Quality Control Supervisor - because Barry admits he has no knowledge of project management up front, I felt the need to provide him with a mentor.  The book mentions that Forest Industries tried to "jump on the project management bandwagon" at one time (sound familiar???), and brought in a couple of project whiz kids to jump start the organization.  When things fizzled, Ben's colleague, Dunn Thaat, left the organization and Ben was reassigned.  Ben's "baggage" about the organization's past is obvious, and it creates some entertaining and enlightening dialogue.  (Again, you are too quick... I bet you caught that whole "Ben Theer, Dunn Thaat" word play.)
• Biff Haire, Salesman - Biff's character is a composite of a few guys I worked with at a prior client many years ago.  That company had the "bright idea" of bringing their best and brightest sales managers into the home office from the field for leadership development.  My job was to turn water into wine... um...  I mean, turn sales guys into project managers.  Don't get me wrong:  it can be done.  Admittedly, Biff is a bit of a caricature, but the contrast from the beginning of the book until the end of the book drives home some of my best lessons learned of project management.
• Flora and Fauna Forest - I absolutely fell in love with these two ladies over the past two years.  They represent the best and worst of what I've seen in project sponsors over the course of time.  Writing their lines was simple, as almost every line they speak came out of the mouth of one of the sponsors with whom I've worked during my career.  The banter between the two as they compare and contrast their ideas was among the most enjoyable I had when writing.  I've come to experience quite a few project sponsors, some of whom I respected greatly while others fall desperately into the WUHOT category.  The best of their personality traits (and the worst of some of the others) come out through the personalities of Flora and Fauna, truly the "grand dames" of this book.

Those are the main characters.  I'll chat a bit about some of the minor characters in my next post.  Only two more weeks until book launch!

Technorati Tags: Race Through The Forest, Character Development, Project Management, Fable

The Plot Thickens

OK, so I've decided to write this "end all be all" business fable on project management.  Now what?!?!?

This is where a little inspiration and a lot of creativity came crashing down all at once.  My blog-buddy, Lucia Mancuso, wrote a great post a while back on multi-tasking, and that's exactly what I was doing when things collided in a goofy sort of way.  I was reviewing the movie, Trading Places, with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd, for an upcoming management class lecture when my daughter came up to me in her cute little fuzzy pajamas wanting me to read her bedtime story.  (NOTE:  Never refuse the opportunity to read bedtime stories to cute children, namely when they are your own.)  The movie had just started, so I turned the volume down while I was reading her the story of choice:    The Tortoise and the Hare.  Something about Randolph and Mortimer Dukes' initial conversation at the beginning of the movie and the simple plot of the children's story jarred some synapses loose, and the basic plot of Race Through The Forest came into focus.

Project managers love to talk about best practices (too often, sometimes, since every project unique by definition).  However, there are some basic principals and guidelines that work across a majority of projects.  There are even more "worst practices" which are sure to create failure in your project unless your guardian angel has been promised overtime and hazard pay.  The story of the The Tortoise and the Hare drive home that contrast of approach quite nicely, but how to extrapolate the contrast into business terms?  I reached into my memory banks and thought of people with whom I had worked who were exact opposites of each other.  I started writing down odd combinations of individuals who could compete in a project management arena.  The one that made me stop and giggle (and then stop again and laugh uproariously) was an accountant vs. a field sales representative.  And the generalized personality traits of these professions fit well with the personalities in the Tortoise and the Hare.  Hence, the accountant Barry Tortisse and the "flashy sales guy" Biff Haire were created.  I'll dive into their respective characters in a later post.

Since neither accountants nor salespeople tend to seek out project management as an alternative lifestyle choice, there needed to be something imposed on them, which is where the movie came into play.  A debate cycles through every once in a while about what makes a good project manager, and the Duke Brothers' debate about genetics vs. environment at the beginning of the movie served as the inspiration for the opening debate of the Forest Sisters, Flora and Fauna.  Again, I'll share more about their character development in a future post.  The debate for my book:  What works best for managing projects?  Something with a little structure to it (slow and steady tortoise) or an individual with a track record of success (speedy hare).

What followed was a lot of fun, a lot of mental wrestling, a lot of replayed conversations, and a lot of digging through old project meeting notes.

Lessons Learned:  Inspiration lies all around you - what are you missing that is right under your nose?  What seemingly unrelated things can you combine to make something new and fun and innovative?  What can happen when you turn down the volume to do something really important?

Next Few Posts:  The Cast of Characters - the good, the bad, the ugly

Technorati Tags: The Tortoise and the Hare, Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, Trading Places, Race Through the Forest, Business Fable, Inspiration, Combinations, Lucia Mancuso, Multitasking

Book 'em, Danno

My first book hits the shelves in three weeks.  My publisher and I currently talk almost daily as last- minute marketing and distribution issues are being discussed and resolved.  It still all seems a little surreal.  To list the emotions of being published for the first time would take a year's worth of blogging.  The only thing to which I can reasonably compare it is the birth of a child.  I watched both of my children enter the world, and it is a truly humbling experience.  To see a being that you helped to create breathe her first breath, make her first sound, and start interacting with the world around her is frightening and amazing and exciting.  I put my heart into Race Through The Forest over the past two years.  My blog-master, Mike Sansone, suggested I write a few posts providing some background on how this book came to be.

For starters, I've maintained a love-hate relationship with business fables over the years.  They are great mind candy for when I want a fast nugget of wisdom that doesn't require a lot of mental digestion.  (However, I'm generally a person who loves to wrestle with what he's reading.)  My future as an author came into focus over a weekend in May, 2004.  My wife was teaching a satellite graduate class for our alma mater, Drake University, and had asked me to escort her for the weekend (she recognized that I needed a change of scenery).  Having recently purchased Raving Fans, that would be enough reading material to get me through a short weekend away.  It's really hard to argue with the premise of the book.  Blanchard and Bowles are right:  Differentiating oneself in the marketplace through exemplary customer vision and focus is key in today's world.  It was the whole "fairy godmother" thing that made me shrug my shoulders.  And the concepts were right out of Common Sense 101.

(Of course, I've had a bone to pick with Ken Blanchard for years.  One Minute Manager.  Yeah, right.  When somebody publishes the One Minute Neurosurgeon and the One Minute Class Action Attorney, maybe I'll bother to take the One Minute Manager seriously.  Yo, Ken, it's a LIFETIME JOURNEY.  I also take offense at some of the "For Dummies" books, but I digress.)

As a project manager, I began wondering why somebody didn't write a decent business fable on project management.  At least then there would be a business fable that people could read and then go back to their desks and actually use.  Then the light bulb flashed.  Why don't I write a decent business fable on project management?  And Race Through the Forest was conceived.

Lessons Learned:  With what are you currently dissatisfied?  Why are you dissatisfied?  What can you do to change it?  What change of scenery do you need to view the problem in a new light?

Any other first time authors out there care to comment?

Next Up:  Framing the Plot

Technorati Tags: Race Through The Forest, Raving Fans, Drake University, Ken Blanchard, Sheldon Bowles, Business Fable