Major activities in executive, managerial, and leadership roles include planning, executing, learning.  We'll concentrate on these and other activities, along with observations and suggestions in the Work section.

The 'Work' section of this site has a bias towards executive, managerial and leadership roles and to product development, though seeking to be broad-based. Subcategories in this section are 'Plan' [brain strain], 'Execute' [muscle strain], and 'Learn' [passive reflection], reflecting a cycle of strategic planning, execution against that plan, and at the completion of each major activity, a 'post-mortem' evaluation of how well the plan was executed and what could be improved. Many companies, groups and individuals say they embrace all three elements, but spend virtually all of their time and energy on tactical execution. Those that do best seem to implement a good balance to all elements.

Strategic Planning has been simplified for those of us who've spent most of their time executing: Erica Olsen of M3Planning and author of "Strategic Planning for Dummies" points out that "Maximum, sustainable, long-term growth is the result of planning, not accident." Unless you have infinite resources, you need to strategically plan how you're going to use those resources and why. A project is usually then put together as a plan with defined activities and deliverables at defined milestones with measurable results.

Execution of the project needs to be done with the players understanding what they're expected to achieve by when and using what resources. Tactical execution requires the flexibility to adapt to the unexpected; good planning provides margins for both the 'known unknowns' (e.g. I don't know what interruptions I'll see on a daily basis, but usually they account for about 2 hours per day …) and 'unknown unknowns' (e.g. most projects of this size and complexity tend to run about 10% longer than we forecast …). Good communications and project management means monitoring those activities, assessing risks, having mitigation plans for those risks, and executing those plans in a timely manner.

A continual improvement evaluation activity is a fundamental aspect of growing a business, improving a product, growing a team, as well as growing one's self. The Chartered Quality Institute says "Continual improvement is a type of change that is focused on increasing the effectiveness and/or efficiency of an organisation to fulfill its policy and objectives. It is not limited to quality initiatives. Improvement in business strategy, business results, customer, employee and supplier relationships can be subject to continual improvement. Put simply, it means 'getting better all the time'."

Although the topics above form a theme for this section, there will also be articles that look at particular product or development areas, based on the experience of our regular contributors. We'll also try to have some fun ... who says we can't share some humor?