Not much is allowed in Wembley © David CurranWe're suspicious of people who don't abide by the rules.
They're no team players. It's hard to accomplish something together. They cop out when the going gets tough. They're evasive They don't address any issues. They're cheating, lying and betraying, from dusk 'till dawn.
Really?
Brick wall © Les ChatfieldWhy are Projects so hard? Why do we fail here so often, even in workplaces featuring thorough planning and highly disciplined execution?
We do not fail despite, but because of these. We believe that turning a project into a success is like baking a pizza, while in fact, it resembles much more creating a pizza recipe.
Why? In our projects, we're not into producing identical results from identical ingredients. Every project is unique - it is like research & development, not like production. In R & D, diversity of results is what we strive for. In production, diversity is our worst enemy. We should be aware of this, however, we're making the same 4 mistakes, over and over again: » Read more
Stephen R. Covey's «The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People» isn't a quick read. It doesn't want to be either. For Covey, success is based on habitual formation of the character - comparable to the cycle of sowing and harvesting and about as time-consuming.
In this eight-part series, I'm going to present the key concepts of the book and what I've learned from them. This is Part 4 of the series.
[Note: If you happen to be a follower of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD), the chapter discussed in this posting provides some interesting ideas on weekly reviews and on how to prioritize your next steps.]
An overview of the series can be found here.
It is easier to learn management than to learn leadership. Leadership is about developing an inner compass, whereas management is about going into the direction suggested by that compass. Leadership is about being effective (knowing and reaching your goals, at all), management is about reaching your goals as efficiently as possible. Covey uses the ladder analogy: » Read more
Flourescent Highlighter pens 1 © Craig JewellHow can we be expected to handle priorities if Wikipedia doesn't even define what a «priority» is?
Priorities come in so many flavors: top priorities; priorities A, B or C; urgent or important priorities. Yet they seem to be so elusive that the Wiktionary, too, just tells us: «priority (plural priorities) - 1. An item's relative importance. …».
Obviously, they are meant to help us. In David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) method, they're one criterion out of four that we use to determine what to tackle next from our list of next actions. David summarized the issue once on his » Read more
The goal of the Ported Open Source Software (POSS) label is simple: to point you to applications that you can safely install on any of your computers and use it for years to come, whether you're online or not, whether you switch to a new operating system or not, whether you can afford buying a new machine every year or not.
In The second part of this mini-series, I'm listing the packages that I'd never want to miss on the systems I use. It's a limited, subjective selection and I'd love to hear from you, in the comments below or via email, about great software that meets the 4 POSS criteria (for » Read more
