Analytical-Mind

1 year of blogging

It has already been 1 year since I published my first blog post. As I quickly figured out, Blogging is like training! It requires time, energy, and commitment and when it is done regularly, it is a great exercise for the mind.

In the 154 posts published since the beginning, my blog has evolved – a lot. I admit, I originally had no real focus and mostly expressed personal opinions.

• Since I like to read, in the beginning I was publishing book reviews which eventually led me to share my virtual bookshelf.
• After joining Pyxis, I naturally started discussing Scrum and Agile principles.
• I then moved on to Agile Business Intelligence which was more technical in nature and attempted to launch a collaborative book.
• Until I discovered something I was much more passionate about – Leadership and Strategy.
• Once in a while, I would point out Other interesting blog posts.
• For several months now, I have been focusing mostly on new organizational structures, communities and agile management.

I realize my style is a mix of situational analysis (analytical-mind), philosophical perspective, suggestions and advices sometime using humour to convey my message.

Finally, my most popular posts were:

1. How I failed as a Product Owner and the lessons I learnt in the process
2. The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Applying Game Theory to Agile Contracting
3. My Virtual Bookshelf
4. Less projects were reported to be successful in 2008
5. Scrum Artifact: Burn Down Chart

In order to improve my blog moving forward, I did a 1-year retrospective and I asked myself 3 simple questions.

What do I feel I did well?

Although there were times when I didn’t publish for a few weeks, I remained committed to maintaining the blog. Not all posts have the same depth but I try to share my perspective and discuss a different way of doing things with the objective of improving people’s quality of life at the office and improving the return on organizational investments.

What do I feel I didn’t do well?

Until I decided which track to follow, I wasn’t focused. It was difficult to retain readers since they didn’t know what to expect.

What do I need to start doing?

Increase collaboration with other bloggers and stay focused on the topics of innovative management, new organizational structures, and leadership.

As of today (February 15th), I will stop maintaining this blog. You can read my candid observations on collaboration and intelligence in a business context.

You may also be interested in my blog post on Pyxis Technologies‘ official blog (French).

Dominic has finally decided to blog. After starting a LinkedIn group, he launched his blog called Agile Business Intelligence.

Long life to his new initiative.

I’m on the cross-trainer in my small home-gym when this analogy comes to mind.

I remember 2 months ago when I started training seriously, that the first 18 minutes of my training (out of my 20 minutes program) were horrible. Although I knew this was great for the mind and the body, MY body wasn’t enjoying it- at all! Starting to work out was difficult and continuing the session was very challenging, no matter what music was playing.

So I set an objective for myself that I would stick with it at least until the beginning of the hockey training (end of October). As a second goal – in case I would meet the first one – I set to lose 15 pounds by January 2009. Ideally, I would keep training for the long run…

So I’m on the cross-trainer realizing that after training 3 – 4 times a week for 45 to 60 minutes, it does get easier. As the weeks passed, the painful period went down from 18 minutes to 12 to 8 to 5 minutes. After 8 weeks, it is still difficult to get the drive to start working out but that only last 5 minutes and I immediately feel the benefits.

So what does this have to do with the blog. Writing on a daily basis probably won’t be easy and for most part it might take some serious efforts but with dedication, perseverance and commitment I would guess it will become easier… Maybe in 8 weeks…

Not sure if it’s the sun or the unusually warm weather for this time of year (12 ^o C / 54 ^o F) but driving back home this afternoon, I decided to join millions of people and start blogging. Actually, to be truthful I know why I’m starting. It’s a combination of factors:

1. As far back as I can remember I always wanted to “write”. I’m not talking about emails, memos or these shorts communication but something more structured, like a story for example. Unfortunately, I don’t have the discipline and training to come up with a good plot, interesting characters and an un-expected ending so blogging is probably an interesting alternative – I don’t have a set plot that I will be following, the characters I will refer to will certainly be interesting (reality is often better than fiction) and I most certainly have no idea how this is going to end.
2. I’m currently going through a career transition – sort of. For now, let’s just say I left the organization I worked for almost 10 years to try a totally different industry. I ended up resigning from that job after less than 2 months. I will certainly share more details over time but for now I feel this transition is indeed one of the driver.
3. I’m half-way through Seth Godin’s latest book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us and felt compelled to do something… This blog might not be much but as someone famous once said (I can’t remember if it’s Einstein or someone else) “you can’t expect a different outcome when you repeat the same steps”.
4. I made a deal with the voice inside my head. Apparently everyone has a voice inside their head – I will need to ask Karine about that. Anyhow, I found the voice inside my head to be disruptive at time. It certainly wasn’t to the point of arguing out loud with it but disruptive enough to take my brain in many directions. So the deal I made is the following, in exchange for peace most of the time – the voice will be entitled to have a discussion with the rest of the brain via this blog.

So here it is. Post number one.

Now that I started I could probably go on for a while so let me put some guidelines around these posts. In no special order (for now).

1. I will try to publish something at least once a day otherwise the voice may want to re-open our agreement.
2. I will try to keep each post under 500 words. This will force me to focus on the key elements of the last 24 hours.
3. I will refer to people by their first name only to preserve their identity.

One final note. I hope others will feel compelled to join this discussion. Other experiences will likely help influence my perception of the world or that of the voice.