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Words to live by: "Start with the little dragons"

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As I stepped off the elevator this morning, a coworker shared those words with me.

"When you're slaying dragons, start with the little ones."

He tells his kids every morning that he's off to slay some dragons. He likes to start with the little ones, because they don't put up near the same fight as the big ones.

I just love this phrase, it really typifies one of the main strategies that's useful in succeeding at Microsoft, particularly as a PM where a lot of your time can be spent in fire fighting and you can get to the end of a week and not be able to really put into words what exactly you accomplished all week.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    PingBack from http://bryanlatestnews.678host.com/kcdragons.html

  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2006
    Love it. I plan to tell our daugther that ;-)

  • Anonymous
    September 11, 2006
    Heck! Good advice can be confusingly contradictory. I was always told to deal with the big stuff first (i.e. slay the big dragons). I'm all for quick wins but as a reformed-PM at Microsoft I know I'd never have survived if I'd just stopped those little lizard-like tasks from nipping at my ankles. I'd have been gobbled up alive by a big hairy dragon on day one if I'd adopted that approach!

  • Anonymous
    September 11, 2006
    The comment has been removed