This early morning has brought with it another perspective on mistakes. Mistakes come in different forms. Some are small, some are catastrophic, some impact only ourselves, some impact others, some are made in a second, others are made over many years, some take a minute to correct, others require long-term commitment. Following are some of my ways of dealing with mistakes.
Listen and get the message. I make mistakes all the time. If you are like me, you do not always recognize your mistakes immediately. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes days, weeks, …

My father brought back from my childhood home my journal where I had written a few poems in my teenage years. As I read them again, I was struck by the contrast of the feelings I must have had when writing these and the complete lack of any feelings currently for the objects of my childhood love. Coincidentally, a friend recently also posted Life probabilities: Memories …. Aside from my slowly fading and gradually distorted memories of the past, that journal is the only evidence left from my emotional teenage …

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 …

I spend most of my time working which for me involves dealing with people and machines all day. The machines are easy, predictable, and obedient creations that do exactly what they are told. People are often quite the opposite. In People, Relationships, and Trust I already wrote about trust which is just as critical in the workplace. Here are a few further thoughts on people that we meet at work.
I have worked with a few hundred people over my working career so far. Over the years, these relationships and actually …

Around eight years ago when we were in St. Thomas on vacation, I wrote down the following values. I had just finished a book about Benjamin Franklin and felt it was important to have my own values down on paper just as he had his. They are as relevant today as they were then. I would add a few more sentences now but we’ll leave that for another post.
Family & Love
Love your family, friends, neighbors, & others. Build trust & spend time with your family. Love thy neighbor. A strong …