Stay Humble: Most of the people on your project team really do want to succeed.  And, though they are frequently overworked, a little appreciation and recognition will spur them to great efforts.  The trick is, the appreciation must be genuine, which requires humility of you.  On the other hand, when you are able to work with a team of experts who do not answer directly to you and lead them to achieve amazing results in their “extra” time, it is only natural for you to expect appreciation and respect for the expertise you brought to the project.  Don’t!  Give others the credit—and I don’t just mean those on the project team.  Be lavish in your praise for the support you received from other project managers, your boss, your boss’s boss, anyone who is in a position to help you or hurt you.  Give them the credit, and mean it.  That takes great humility.

Stay Focused: Learn and remember the purpose of your project and the purpose of your job.  I say “learn” because the stated purpose and the real purpose may be two different things.  Ignorance of this fact can be a quick and painful job-ending move.  Can you tell I learn this one the hard way?  And it was my fault: I took my focus off of my real purpose because I was working so diligently to produce a desired outcome.

Stay Aware of Your Surroundings: I am not a big fan of horror movies—you know, the kind where the murdering fiend is hiding in the closet with a meat cleaver.  One of the staples of this type of movie (and one that drives me crazy) is for a poor sap to enter a room unaware of the presence of the psychotic killer just a few feet away. Sometimes project management feels like that.  We blissfully navigate the treacherous waters of corporate politics and think we have already identified all avenues of potential resistance or trouble.  Do not be fooled!  There are always fresh opportunities for trouble.  As project managers, we face a multitude of opportunities for people to point accusatory fingers at us and, for this, we are often well prepared because we document EVERYTHING.  We are also professional change agents, and, as such, are often seen as the source of (unnecessary) work and (fear inducing) uncertainty by some of the corporate bureaucrats with whom we interact.  It will serve you well to remain constantly diligent because a disruption from this source can come at any time and from any direction.  It is much harder to clean this up too, because accusations tend to be vague and intangible.  Far better to spend some additional time minding the “grapevine” and building relationships in all directions than to have to clean up this kind of mess.

Project Management can be the most satisfying of jobs because, if you’re good, you can make amazing things happen.  But it is dangerous.  Just like any good Boy Scout, you must always “Be Prepared”.

For those of you who do not know anything about music, a little background is required.  When a musician looks at a piece of music, it is broken down into small segments called measures.  Each measure has a certain number of beats to it- usually four.  The speed of the beats determines the tempo of the music played.

Have you ever noticed that when you listen to a piece of music, not everyone plays at the same time?  That is because some of the musicians have “rests” instead of notes in their measures of music.  A rest is a symbol for enforced quiet and can be for one beat or many beats.  If the musician plays while he has a rest, he destroys the music.

I view life is a magnificent symphony.  Our Conductor has given us the music we are to play and He gives us the tempo at which we are to play it.  There are certain times in my life when I have a rest, or perhaps several of them in a row.  I may want to play my instrument at that time, but I cannot.  To do so would be to destroy the beauty of the work as a whole.  Fretting about it does not make the rest any shorter.  It is my job to be prepared to play when it is my turn AND NOT BEFORE.

How about you?  Are you one of the people performing a solo right now—frantically playing your instrument the best that you can, knowing that all eyes are locked on you?  Are you playing a beautiful harmony so that others sound the best that they can?

Or are you, like me, staring at a rest?  If so, I invite you to join me: I’ll be preparing my instrument and enjoying the music.

After months of contemplation and the urging of such experts as Keven Liebl and Sven Johnston, I’ve decided to pick up the digital pen and join the scads and scads of bloggers.  I’m not exactly sure where this journey will take me, but I know it is something that I should have started long ago.  I’ve always wanted to write but, like many, have allowed myself to become daunted by the (imaginary) size of the task.  The excellence, and the frequency with which some bloggers write (I am thinking of Tim Tyrell-Smith and Neal Schaffer here) only adds to my trepidation:  How can I possibly add anything of value to the blogosphere when authors of such excellence are already there?  I surmise that the first few submissions will be as painful to read as they are to write: I ask my audience to be gracious as I hone my skills in the written word.  As with many worthwhile tasks, starting is the hardest and the most important part.  And, I assure you, that the imperfections of my writing will be more painful to me than to you.

I wanted to thank Glen Loock and Rayanne Thorn for giving me the final push off of the precipice.  It should be an exciting ride!

GERONIMO!!!