This is my first post on “niccollsanddimes”… or is it?  Truthfully, it’s more of an extended introduction. I thought that before I jumped into things, I owed everyone an explanation as to why I’m setting off on this path. After all, some of you might be on the same path or at least intending to follow a similar path.

For most of my professional career, I’ve been involved in projects as much as operations. By this I mean that some of the time I manage day to day functions or services, and some of the time I take on projects, which are usually to fix, improve, develop or bring about some sort of change in a service. While I always wore many hats, years ago most of the time, managers of operations and the managers of projects were separate people. Operations manager had occasional projects, but they weren’t that frequent. Today, in a world of continuous improvement and Six Sigma management, every manager in a large corporation needs to know all about project management… how to identify potential projects, create consensus, develop achievable objectives, understand the metrics of success, introduce meaningful reporting, install a governance process, and repeat, repeat, repeat.

In the posts that will follow, we’re going to focus on how to find important management lessons in major cultural and business events, and we will sift through business events to find the simple rules on how to bring about change. Which brings us back to the title, “niccollsanddimes”. Originally, I thought I’d use a title like “Change Makers”, but there were just too many sites (and copyrights!) for any title like that. To me “Niccolls AND Dimes” means, “How I (Niccolls) can help you bring about a small change (Dimes)”. I hope that it also means that we’ll have a bit of humor along the way.  

So, for all my colleagues out there… and especially for any new managers looking for simple answers to complex problems… drop by, read a few posts and let’s see if we can all help each other!