As I was driving to work a couple days ago, a strange question came into my mind. Why am I so different from so many men who enjoy working on their cars? They like to keep their vehicles clean, engines bright, and wheels shining. Many men (around the globe) spend hours on their cars while also dreaming of owning better cars. Being fairly mechanically inclined, I am sure I could fix just about any issue in a car but I don’t even have the interest, let alone the tools. I …

Home improvement contractors are unique people. I am no longer surprised by the tricks pulled by some of them as I have learned to expect absolutely anything. Does their business environment require some to act a certain way? I have not yet fully figured this out and hope you’ll share some of your experiences and thoughts. Here are some of mine.
Know the work. This is a difficult one as the more you know the less pleasant it is to see the various shortcuts that are employed at your expense. However, …

For the last couple days, I’ve been dealing with project management issues. Training, textbooks and authorities on the topic say that you must have a clearly defined scope, timeline and resource plan. There are even contract writing solutions, all kinds of methodologies, and even books that go into detail on how to arrange the parts and execute to succeed where success is defined as completing the project on-time within budget. From my experience so far, all of this is not sufficient and is ineffective at guaranteeing a truely predictable successful …