Ever heard of SMART Goals? I’ve seen several variations on the title, but it’s used something like this:

S - Specific
M - Measureable
A - Achievable
R - Relevant
T - Time dimensioned

Most people think of them as important for things like life goals or large projects, but you need to think about them even for small projects.

There are times when it seems that people just don’t realize how important goals like this are. If you have a communications project that you’re working on, take some time to develop SMART goals and you’ll find that everything goes smoother.

Let’s consider how we might want to apply this to a real situation. Suppose we need to build a presentation that’s important to get funding for a project we REALLY want to do. Let’s see how each piece applies:

• Specific - What EXACTLY do you want to achieve in the presentation? What is success? What is failure? Be CONCRETE. Be EXACT.
• Measurable - How will I know I’ve been successful? How can I tell that my presentation has been successful? Are there questions I can ask that will give me an indication of the level of support?
• Achievable - Is the funding I need to get possible? Does it go beyond what the company has normally done? Is it realistic that the company will DO what I want it to do?
• Relevant - Does this REALLY matter to ME? Am I passionate about this or is this something that I’m expected to do for someone else? If it’s not personally important to me, then it’s probably not relevant.
• Time Dimensioned - What’s the deadline? You’ve got two here: FIRST for the presentation, everything has to be ready to present at the right time; SECOND for the project, even if you sell the project successfully, will you be able to meet the time constraints of the project itself?

Don’t take this as a need to build some sort of formal goal structure. That’s not necessary, but some goals even informal ones are important to success.

Once you can clearly see your goal and you know that you’re passionate about it, you know that it’s really achievable, then get to work and make it happen!

Categories: Project Management, The Basics
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Basic Project Management

Project Management exists on many levels and with many degrees of complexity. For example, at one end of the scale, I learned project management in the Navy, training to use PERT systems in shipyards on New Construction. I was on USS Enterprise during refueling and USS Virginia when it was built. Building something as complex as a Nuclear Cruiser is a massive undertaking requiring not just one project manager, but many of them.

At the other end of the scale, project management can be just a step above time management where instead of just a task or a set of unrelated tasks that need to be completed, you need to complete a set of related tasks all of which lead to some goal. Building a Customer Facing System is in between these limits.

Most of the writing projects I’ve worked on have been at the lowest level, what I like to call ‘Everyday Project Management’ while others involved complex systems, thousands of agents, multiple sites, and so forth. No matter what the size though, there are some constants in Project Management.

Over the years, I’ve needed to teach basic project management to teams that simply never thought of it as important. I’ve taught it to developers, consultants, architects, magazine editors, executives, and others. For the last several years, I’ve used the book To Do Doing Done by Lynne Snead & Joyce Wycoff as my text. For a more detailed treatment that covers the full range of project management, I refer people to the Project Management Institute’s (PMI’s) PMBOK:

I’m going to expand on some of my other writings I’ve done on project management to highlight some things that EVERYONE should know. This isn’t about being a project manager, but it’s about understanding enough of the basics that

1. You understand when you need a project manager
2. You understand what the project manager is telling you
3. You understand why the project manager is asking for some things

VPIC

I’ve been in too many projects where there was a rush to jump in and get things done. This is a major mistake!

Let’s understand something right at the beginning, no plan in the history of the world has ever worked EXACTLY as planned! Things change; Needs change; Circumstances change; and we just down right make mistakes. it happens on every project. Some people tend to think the time spent planning is a waste of time. Nothing could be further from the truth

Planning is essential to successfully completing a project, not because we’re going to build a perfect plan, we’re not. It’s essential because of the time you spend thinking about it. Thinking through what you’re going to do, thinking about contingencies, thinking about resources, all of that gets you ready for real life.

Overall, a project will roughly break itself down into 4 major pieces according to Snead & Wycoff. These go under the acronym VPIC:

• Visualize - every project starts with an idea, something you want to do or build, so we start by getting a clear picture in our minds of the end point
• Plan - once we know where we’re going, we need to know what we have to do, who’s going to do it, and how much it will cost in time, effort, and money.
• Implement - any project involves some amount of communication and control. When there are several people involved, this becomes more obvious, but even if we’re working on something alone, there is still a need to manage communications and control the project.
• Close - one of the big things that often gets missed is closure. I’ve seen to many projects where the people thought it was done when things when the goal was reached. If you don’t do some clean up and take advantage of the chance to learn something, you’ll never get better.

Over the next several weeks, I want to expand on some of these themes and relate them to more formal project management methodologies. We’ll talk some about several methodologies I’m familiar with:

• PRINCE2 Methodology - (Projects In Controlled Environments). This is the standard in the UK and I was trained on it when I was working on projects in the UK. It’s a thorough, comprehensive system.
• PMI Methodology - (Project Management Institute). Another comprehensive methodology
• A variety of methodologies adapted to specific areas like Agile Development

We’ll spend some time discussing methodologies and what they can do for us in case you’d like to learn more. Why bother if all I’m doing is writing for a presentation or to deliver a proposal? It’s simple. If you’re anything at all like me, you will forget something. If you have something to do which involves more than one step, then some basic project management will help you do a better job.

Categories: The Basics, Tools
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If you want to write something, you have to be willing to learn something. I’m not talking about grammar or style, though learning these things are important. No, I’m talking about the subject matter you’re writing about.

In order to write well, you have to understand thoroughly. Understand well enough to express yourself casually without misunderstanding at any level. This is easier when you’re speaking because you can look for audience reaction and respond to it, but when you’re writing, what you’ve written has to stand alone, without your help. You can’t look over the shoulder of the person who is reading your piece, what you wrote is on its own.

What sort of subject matter expertise do you need? Certainly, more than the person who is reading what you’re writing. It’s fair to say that you can’t learn too much here, but practical considerations limit how much you CAN learn. Time is limited. Subject material may be limited. Subject matter may be confusing, conflicting, difficult to find, or just downright wrong. How can you tell? Let’s take a moment to consider some practical recommendations for getting what you need.

FIRST and most important for any learning experience is your own motivation. It doesn’t matter what sort of learning environment you’re in. If you’re in high school, college, a training program, or just trying to learn something that interests you, you have to realize that if you fail to learn, you are the one responsible. Teachers, mentors, instructional designers, and others don’t make you learn. They can HELP but they can’t learn for you. You need to be motivated to learn. Ask yourself:

• What’s your goal? What do you want to accomplish?

SECOND how do you learn most effectively? We all have ways we prefer to learn. Some of us are visual, you like to see charts, pictures, diagrams, or some other visual representation. Some of us are tactile, we like to touch and do. We learn best when we can actually get our hands on things. Some of us prefer to use textual modes, getting information faster from books or other written material. There are also those who learn best by using auditory modes for what we need to learn. How do you learn best? Further, no one is purely any one of those styles. The visual mode may dominate, but the tactical mode is a strong second so mixed mode learning will help you get information together faster and more effectively.

Remember the first point, you are responsible for your own learning. If you really WANT to learn, then you need to take responsibility for adapting what’s available to make best use of your modes of learning. Let’s say you’re taking an online course, you have a lot of material to read, but you’re best working in a tactile mode. If you’re really interested in learning, then find ways to actually apply what you’re reading. Get hands on in one way or another, even if it’s nothing more than taking notes.

THIRD you know the goal. You know how you work best. Do you have a plan? How are you going to get from where you are to where you want to be? What do you need to learn? How much time do you have? What resources are available to learn from? A plan doesn’t have to be written down with GANTT charts or PERT charts, but you need to think through what you need to do. It’s the PLANNING far more than the plan that makes you successful. However, to plan, you need to know where you are.

FOURTH, knowing where you are is essential to good learning. The most effective way for me personally has always been the Memory Dump. I’ll start to build a mind map, starting initially with questions about where the information is and what I already know and eventually adding in more and more details. My starting point for Learning was something like this:

I don’t usually build a dump like this with software, but instead put it in my journal, more like this:

It’s messy, informal, and probably not readable by anyone but myself. However, it’s not for anyone else. it’s to help me figure out what I know and help me develop questions that I can use in my reading to help me learn.

Ultimately, if you plan to learn anything, you’ve got to put the time and effort into it and accept responsibility for your own success. As a teacher, mentor, instructor, and trainer, I’ve often heard the old “I didn’t have the time” excuse from people who come to the end of an online course. In most cases though, time wasn’t the problem. There’s an old saying that ‘We make the time to do what we want to do.’ Lack of time is never the issue, it’s lack of motivation.

All of these things are best done as we begin to learn, when motivation is high.

UPDATE: Updated the figure of my notebook to make it more readable

Categories: Learning, The Basics
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As I’ve said several times, my journal is important to me. I think of it as an intellectual toolkit that helps me think thins through. I’m not always good about keeping it up, but I know I should.

I ran across this article about journal writing and decided that while I apply it’s basic points differently, they still are meaningful even in my context.

My journal is an important part of my work and a lasting record of my thoughts. I’ll draw in the book, do mind maps, diagrams, notes, snippets of code, design patterns, use cases, UML diagrams, or whatever. I’ll also take notes there when interviewing and notes when I’m studying a problem I’m trying to solve. I have journals that go back as far as the early 1960s. There are plenty of gaps, but I always come back to using a journal because it’s so useful to me.

• Get the Right Tools - Working in a journal needs to be about what you’re thinking and not the tools. You need tools you’ll be comfortable with. I don’t use top-of-the-line quality, but I work on good paper and with writing instruments that feel good in my hand. Currently, I’m using notebooks I picked up at an Office Max with pretty good quality paper. I splurged some years back and purchased a leather cover for my journals that the notebooks fit in nicely.
  

  Along with it, I purchased a leather pen holder which can hold 6 pens. In it, I keep a Black, Blue, Red, and Green pen (currently Pilot G2) and my pen & pencil set. I do my initial work in Black and use Blue, Red, & Green to annotate and add to the basic entry.

• Make it a Habit - I spend time writing in my journal daily. As a minimum, I try to capture major events during the day. There are days where I’m so involved in something that I completely forget the time and everything else. I’ve slipped into a Flow state and am oblivious to everything. When that happens, I’ll probably not get a journal entry that day because I usually don’t snap out until someone gets ready to turn out the lights and say it’s time for bed. I realize I’m so tired that I just can’t think and off I go. I may have a bunch of notes in my journal or my popup wiki, but they’re associated with whatever I’m working on and nothing else. I DO try to make it a habit though and put an item daily on my task list for the journal.
• Fire Your Inner Critic - Once you start putting things in, turn off your inner critic for a while. Let yourself go and just start dumping. Go free form whether you’re using a mindmap, doing a freewriting exercise, or whatever. Sometimes the best, most creative stuff comes out when the inner critic is off. There’s a time for being critical, certainly before anyone sees what you’re doing. But the journal is private and just for you. What you put there is yours alone, so open up and get it down.
• Use your Journal for Mental Food - the article actually said ‘article food’, but I use it for food for all of my mental & intellectual pursuits. It’s my notebook when I’m learning something. It’s my dumping ground when I’m trying to test what I know. It’s my source for what I’m doing whether I’m writing my blog, a program, or a proposal. My journal is my source, my playground, and the place where I keep everything I want to think about. When I’m on my laptop working like this, it’s inconvenient to write in my paper journal, so I use a popup wiki that I can add thoughts to easily to capture what I want to remember.

Journal writing on a regular basis gives you fodder for all the things you do. Right now, I’m working on a Ruby/Rails project, reviewing some material and testing things. I’m doing rough notes and diagrams in my journal, getting things out of my head. When I see my rough notes on paper, I find I can think about them better and my journal never forgets.

I’d extend the list a bit too

• Keep it or something to write on with you all the time - I always have some way to take notes with me. Even when I’m driving, I have a small portable recorder near by because sometimes I get good ideas when I can’t stop and can’t take my eyes off the road. So I speak it into my recorder. At night and whenever my journal can’t be near, I have a ‘Shirt Pocket Briefcase‘ always at hand with a small pen or pencil. I have two, one which I carry with me and another which has a pen loop on it that stays by my bed.
  

  I have specially printed cards that I keep in them which include the normal stuff on a business card. I can write a note and hand it to someone or keep it for myself. Later, I can transfer the notes to my journal and throw away the 3X5 cards.

Categories: The Basics, Tools
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There are so many ways of keeping a journal, that any guidance given won’t make sense to someone. The blog Inspired to Journal talks about a number of tools people use to write their journals. All I can do is talk about what I use and ways I’ve tried.

Let’s start with my tools.

• Notebook - I use notebooks approximately 6″ X 9″ in size. I prefer lined pages with clean white paper. I buy the notebooks in a variety of places, often under the title ‘Composition Notebook’.
• Pens - I usually use a black pen to write or draw in the notebook. I usually use whatever is at hand when I want to write, but I particularly like the Pilot G2 pen to write & draw with. I keep a set of Black, Blue, Red, and Green pens handy. I use Black the most, closely followed by Blue, then Red and Green.
• Notebook Cover - I purchased a leather cover for my notebook which makes it look good when I’m in high level meetings. Since I move from the front-line to the board room at times, making my notebook look good is important.
• Large White Sticky Labels - I keep a set of large white labels to paste on the front of the journal. On this label, I put my name and the dates covered within this volume of the journal.

There are lots of other ways to keep a journal, some of which I’ve tried and some I haven’t. Any way that makes sense to you is worth using. For example, I’ve tried:

• Keeping my journal in my dayplanner - I found this to be a problem, mixing things. Eventually, I decide that my dayplanner is for scheduling and short notes, the journal is for more extensive writing, researching, and so forth.
• Keeping my journal on the computer - General applications - I’ve tried using Notepad, Word, and other general applications for keeping a journal. It just didn’t work for me. I’ve got too much I want to put into my journal and sometimes, my computer just isn’t available.
• Keeping my journal on the computer - Journaling applications - I’ve tried several journaling applications. Unfortunately, these didn’t work for me because they weren’t available when I wanted to make entries. Further, I couldn’t make all the kinds of entries I wanted to. The application I liked the best was LifeJournal which introduced me to a number of very interesting journaling techniques, but it did require me to be at the computer to use them.
  
  
• Keeping my journal on the computer - Special notebooks - I tried keeping a journal using OneNote & Outlook on Windows and NoteBook & Entourage on Macintosh. All of them were good, OneNote and NoteBook especially came close when using them from my laptop. Unfortunately, I lost many of the files when moving to a new computer and no longer had OneNote available.
  
  
  
  
  

  I love both of these applications. I did A LOT with OneNote, but when I moved to a Mac laptop, it was no longer available. Since it had come preinstalled on my Windows Laptop, I couldn’t transfer it to another Windows workstation, so I lost it. On the Mac, NoteBook has turned out to be an exceptional application, but not for Journaling. I’ll talk about it some time.

Over time, I’ve developed my tool set to support the following needs:

1. I like to have the notebook with me all the time and add thoughts to it anywhere.
2. I like to record quick notes about what’s going on during the day that I want to remember
3. I like to draw freehand at times and the notebook keeps these scribblings together
4. I often use colored pens and highlighters to draw attention to things. I found shifting colors and highlighting awkward on the computer. In my dayplanner, the colors distracted from the purpose of the dayplanner which is to keep me focused on what needs to be done today or this week.
5. I have a strong negative reaction personally to people who use laptops in meetings. Too often you find them with their head buried in their laptop instead of participating in the meeting. One fellow I used to work for would be chatting with people through the Internet while in meetings. I resolved to never do that myself.

Categories: The Basics
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Over the last several days I’ve done a number of things with my journal that have led me to say something about how important a journal can be to your writing and speaking … in fact to everything that you do. I’m going to use the next several posts to discuss my journal and how important it is to me and the many ways I use it.

My journal is a notebook, roughly the same size as the composition books you may have used in school. I stick to a size around 6 X 9 inches. Some years ago, I purchased a leather cover in that size to make it more acceptable in high-level meetings. I keep the journal in ink and use multiple color pens.

Some of the things that I do in my journal include:

• Writing letters that will never be sent - in order to help me decide how to vote, I wrote a letter to John McCain which will never be sent. In it I expressed my thoughts, frustrations, and the issues as I saw them. it helped me to decide on my vote. I’ve done the same thing in the past with letters to bosses and others to get all my ideas out and review them before I actually try to communicate. If I don’t take the time to do this, it’s easy for me to literally trip over my words and miscommunicate what I really mean.
• Organizing Impressions - I’ve been working on a case study about HP Printers. I took a 2 page spread in my journal and started mind mapping everything I knew and then started filling in holes that I found in the mind map by researching additional material
• Mapping Concepts - when you are writing or speaking, you need to be very clear on the concepts you’re using, not just for yourself but for your audience. Mapping the concepts and their definitions in my journal helps me to be clear and communicate well
• Meeting Notes - When I’m in a meeting, I normally take notes in my journal. This gives me a record, taken during the meeting and carefully preserved in my journal, that I can go back to to make sure I’ve got things right. The 6 X 9 inch page size gives me enough space to record what’s important.
• Organizing Notes - After a meeting, I’ll take a different color pen and add to the meeting notes as I gather information on important points. I’ll use a highlighter to mark commitments made during the meeting.
• Planning Projects - One of my first steps in organizing a project is to create a list of what needs to be done. I do that in a mind map in my journal.
• Laying out Lesson Plans - I’m working on course notes for an online course. I’ve mapped the important points in my journal as the basis for additional research
• Blog Post Notes - The start of this post is a mind map that started with the central idea ‘Keeping a Journal’. Several other blog posts are in various stages of development in my journal as well.
• Notes on Books I’m Reading - One of the most powerful ways I know to learn is to take notes on the material, ask yourself questions to answer during your reading, and relate the material to things you already know. I’m doing this now on a technical book I’m working through right now.

Seems like a lot doesn’t it? It does, but each of these are taken from pages in my journal starting on the 1st of November, just a few days ago. Some of these pages were written in the middle of the night when I woke up and couldn’t sleep without dumping something out of my mind. Others were written while reading or in meetings. I find that I need to get ideas out on paper when they come to me, so my journal is always with me for just that purpose.

Over the next several posts, I plan to discuss my journal, the mechanics of how I make it work for me, and why I think a journal is an important tool for making your ideas clear. Tentatively I plan to split the discussion as follows:

• Journal Mechanics - how I make my journal work for me
• Journal Tools - notebooks, pens, and other tools I find useful in journaling
• Alternate Journal Formats - keeping it on your computer, online, in your day planner, or in other ways that are convenient for you
• The Journal Process - my journaling is integrated into a daily process I’ve tried to make into a habit so it happens automatically
• Practical Journaling - ways to use a journal
• Thoughts on Journaling - other thoughts about journaling and its benefits

Categories: Practical Applications, The Basics, Tools
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Some looking around this evening and I ran across blog post which led me to another and to another. An interesting sequence because the topic was simple enough, the use of ME and I in sentences. Do you know the difference?

What drew me into this discussion was the title Pronoun Use is NOT Rocket Science. The article intrigued me because it talked about how a Fifth grader does it better than a television reporter. This led me to follow the links to Fifth Grader Has Better Grammar Than News Reporter.

It was an interesting and instructive diversion. Is this important? You bet it is. If the audience you’re speaking to or writing for includes anyone literate enough to understand the difference, then using ME and I incorrectly will detract from the point you’re trying to make and may even hide it.

Getting the words right, learning to use them right, and polishing your grammar so that it flows smoothly and correctly helps to make your point easier to get across because it keeps people’s attention on your POINT and not your GRAMMAR.

Categories: The Basics
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One of the main points on this blog is that you need to be understood when you write or speak. This is a problem for many people whether they’re technically inclined or not. I recently came across a blog post at copyblogger.com that takes an interesting viewpoint on Persuasive Writing.

For many years, people talked about the formula AIDA in writing copy for marketing and sales. The letters stand for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. This has been a simple way to structure short, persuasive pieces when you’re trying to sell something.

Brian Clark, the author of the article “The Four “P” Approach: A Persuasive Writing Structure That Works” on copyblogger.com takes a different approach. This isn’t something new as others have been using this as well, but this article is a particularly nice discussion of the formula.

The 4P approach is Promise, Picture, Proof, and Push. Summarized, his approach is

1. Promise - the promise is your opening and has to focus on a promise that makes sense to whoever you’re trying to communicate with. What’s in it for THEM! If you can get them to see the benefit to themselves, they’ll be more disposed to following the rest of what you have to say.
2. Picture - you want to paint a picture that gets emotional involvement from the people you’re trying to convince. If you can get them emotionally involved, you’re that much closer to convincing them.
3. Proof - emotional connection is never quite enough. You need to address people’s logical mind as well by offering proof of why this works for THEM. Proof is always a part of making the case clear.
4. Push - here’s where you connect the dots and try to get a commitment to actually doing something. Do you want approval to start a project? Do you want a raise? A promotion? Whatever it is that you’re trying to convince someone about, this is where you tie your argument to their action.

A very important point made in the article is that persuasion is about UNDERSTANDING. That’s true no matter what kind of piece you’re writing. In order to persuade someone, they have to understand what you’re saying. You need to put the effort in to make it happen because YOU want THEM to understand. It’s YOUR responsibility to adjust your communication, not your audience’s.

So why should you bother reading about it? Simple, you can apply either formula when trying to put together a short, persuasive piece like an email or even use it as a structuring idea for a short talk or presentation. When you’re trying to convince someone, you’re being a marketer or a sales person. You’re not just a ‘techie’, you’re selling something, your idea, your project, or whatever. Think about formulas like this when you want to make a persuasive argument clearly.

Categories: Skills, The Basics
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If you are, then you should learn from the best. I was looking over a search today and found a blog entry at hackademia.net called “Good writing makes the difference” which pointed me a Computerworld article by John Brandon on “The top 10 best-written blogs“. I’m looking at each blog to learn how to make my own blogging better.

Reading Brandon’s article lead me to his blog about the characteristics of a good blog (”What makes a blog worthwhile?“). The keys are:

• Good writing
• Interesting points

The top-10 blog article added these points:

• Writing with humor and wit
• Thoughtful posts that are literate and worth reading
• Thoughtful and insightful writing
• A high plateau when issues are debated
• Using facts to engage you

All of these SOUND easy to do, but it takes practice to do them well. Humor and wit are more then just cracking jokes. They are finding a smile instead of a belly laugh in a situation by tying it to the human condition as others see it.

Remember too that if you’re looking for a job, your potential employer is looking for you online. They’re going to read what you write and evaluate you on what they see. Would you like to be considered in the company of the Top 10 when that evaluation is made?

Categories: Blogging, Practical Applications, Skills, The Basics
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No matter what you’re writing or speaking about, if it’s more than a few lines, it deserves some attention and some planning. That’s basic emphasis of my whole approach. it doesn’t require Microsoft Project or similar software and doesn’t require full-blown project management or a specialist like a certified PMP. You need something that I call ‘Everyday Project Management’

What is Everyday Project Management? It’s an approach between time management and project management that uses tools and techniques of both to deal with projects too big for a todo list, but too small for project management tools. I’ve discussed many of the principles in my paper Notes on Time and Project Management. You can also find some applicable information in my introduction to Project Management ‘Project Management 101′

Let’s consider an example.

Assume you need to make a presentation to the executive committee in your company to provide technical justification for a project that you believe in. There’s a business manager who will handle the financial justification, but you need to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the project. You’ve got to make the presentation in a week, so how will you use your time to be ready when your turn comes up to speak?
When I’m going to make a presentation, I start by doing some simple things:

1. I open a tab in my day planner for the presentation and put related notes there.
2. I make a list of everything I know that I’ll have to do to get ready, working through what are generally called planning and visualization
3. I assign dates to the items in the list and put them on the appropriate task list in my day planner. If I have an automated calendar that I’m using for a group collaboration, I’ll enter the items there and set alarms.
4. I open my day planner to the day of the presentation and start a list of last minute things (charge my laptop battery), things I want to make sure are ready, and things to bring (water, power cord, handouts, etc.).

Planning and Visualization are two parts of almost any project, but for Everyday Projects, we do an abbreviated version. For myself, I like to get the goal sorted out and written down. I find it helps me to define the goal in writing. To define the goal, I use the old SMART thumbrule:

• Specific
• Measureable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Timed

These are really thinking points to make sure I haven’t left something without thinking about it. My goal is my end point, so I’ll start with the end, my presentation, and what I want it to me like.

My most important list is what I need to do to get this done, my task list. For an everyday project, I set it up in the back of my dayplanner behind a colored tab.

I try break tasks out so that no single task takes too long. I usually use a mind map to build the list because my thinking is non-linear. I’ll translate it into a linear plan later. In building the list, I’ll ask myself some basic questions:

• What things do I need to DO to get ready? My tasks
• What will interfere with getting things done? My constraints
• Are there any sensitive issues I need to be aware of and handle carefully?
• Are there any logical groupings of tasks that I can use to make what I need to do easier?
• Is there one sequence that makes more sense than any other?
• Is there anyone else I can delegate some of the responsibility to or anyone whose help I need?
• What is my time limit for preparation? Not for delivery, but for preparation. I may need to leave time to review my material with my boss or get copies made, or even get approval before the presentation.
• Are there any costs associated with what I need to do? Is the money allocated to do it?

Once I have my task list in hand, I set aside a box or folder to put things in like reports, books, or anything that I might need to refer to during preparation. I’ll also setup a folder on my computer to hold files that I’ll need to refer to.

All of that is a pretty good start, but there’s more to consider. I’m writing a White Paper which I’ll post to tie it all together.

Categories: Skills, The Basics, Tools
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