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Frank Patrick's Focused Performance Business Blog
This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

Cleaning Out the To-Do List -- Back when I was Director of Industrial Engineering at Nabisco's Planters-Lifesavers Division, one of my duties was to deal with the wide range of stuff that my boss (the VP of Operations) kept throwing in my direction to research, review, or report back to him on. Recognizing that he was about as curious and inquisitive and attention challenged as myself, I quickly realized that not everything he passed along to me was really top priority. Rather than go back to him and ask "What don't you want me to do?," I often found myself using my judgment to simply prune my to-do list without action. I rationalized this with the theory that if really was important, he would bring it up again. I never really got burned by doing this, so I guess my judgment was good enough.

Over the past few months, my to-blog list of interesting web-bits has started to get out of hand. So I've applied my judgment and pared it down to a handful that I want to explore more deeply and comment on in depth. This has left a remainder of good points, interesting ideas, and just things that made me go "hmmmm" that, rather than let sit fallow, I'll just toss out here for your consumption in a start-of-the-year cleaning of my weblog backlog...

From the usual respected suspects...
Questions that help people move forward, from Esther Derby

Informal Learning: A Sound Investment, from Jay Cross

Estimates: Precision vs. Accuracy, from Johanna Rothman

The Business Case for Personal Productivity Improvement, from Dave Pollard

Breaking Down Requirements, from C. Keith Ray

The Trouble with Projects, from Laurent Bossavit

Is Your Project Out of Control?, via s.norrie
And from others...
When Bad Things Happen to Good Projects, from Baseline

Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management Research Papers

On the Spot Training, from Rick Cogley

The Top Ten Reasons Projects Fail (Part 8) and (Part 9), from Gantthead (free registration might be required)

Extreme Project Management, also from Gantthead

Why Can't We Get Anything Done?, from Fast Company

Interview: David Weinberger, from Frank Paynter
Now that I've done a fairly decent job of wiping the slate clean, I've got no excuses to procrastinate with some meaty postings, except maybe unless someone hires me for a gig.

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