Chapter Nineteen. Learning Lessons

The essence of success is that it is never necessary to think of a new idea oneself. It is far better to wait until somebody else does it, and then to copy him in every detail, except his mistakes.

Aubrey Menen

"I hope you’ve learned your lesson!" Unless you were different from most children, you probably heard that admonishment more than once while growing up. Unfortunately, that statement has made many people think of lessons as negative and mistakes as something to hide. As an adult, not repeating the mistakes of the past is an important part of improving performance for the projects you manage.

Improving performance isn’t just about avoiding past mistakes. Progress comes from continually building on the successes ...

Get On Time! On Track! On Target! Managing Your Projects Successfully with Microsoft® Project now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.