My daughter is 16 and she just passed the test for her driver's license. (For those of you parents out there, I could probably just end here). In my daughter's mind... she is the best driver in the whole world. I recently rode in the passenger's seat while she was driving, with one hand gripping the dashboard and the other "white knuckled" clutching the handle above the window. Yes, I was panicked, but she was not.
My sweet little girl who played with dolls, who took dance lessons and who was happiest playing softball, was yelling at the drivers all around her. My daughter who had held a driver's license for a total of 4 days, was saying things like "What is that jerk doing?", "OMG, this guy is an idiot" and "When did they learn to drive?"
My wife and I are to blame for this problem. When my daughter first received her drivers permit, she was terrified. We insisted that she learn to drive a manual transmission, so she stalled the car constantly. When she could drive reasonably well in an open parking lot, we forced her onto the roads, (granted, the roads had maybe 2 cars a day on them), but they were valid roads. Then we forced her into busier traffic and eventually she moved up to driving on the highway.
We built up her confidence level, so now she is ready to do anything. Although she understands the mechanics of driving, she has yet to master the skills and reflexes of driving safely. Our new job is to help our daughter develop realistic goals and expectations about her driving skills.
This year at B2BGateway, we are trying to help our clients develop realistic goals and expectations as well. (Yes, here is the tie in).
In the next few weeks we are rolling out project plans for every new trading partner setup. The project plan will define exactly what we do, when setting up a trading partner relationship and it will define when we are going to do it. The Project Plan will have Gantt charts and will list each document required by the trading partner. Basically, the project plan will help to define the services that B2BGateway provides and how long it should take us to implement that task.
Realistic goals and expectations will help to better manage a trading partner implementation and will keep me from having a heart attack when riding in the car with my daughter.
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