Feedback is a huge part of what I do in my daily life. I give feedback in my role as a consultant to help my client do something better or avoid something bad. Early in my career, I began learning about right and wrong ways to provide feedback. Sometimes I did it okay, other times I really booted it.

As a professional, spouse, parent and now grandparent, I’m still learning about how to provide feedback—when to give it, and when to keep my mouth shut. I adopted the mantra, “My job is to tell you what I think; yours is to decide what to do with it.” It gives me freedom to constructively speak my mind, while acknowledging the recipient may or may not use what I told them.

When I started writing, I got a better appreciation for the “yours is to decide what to do with it” part of the mantra. I get feedback from you as ProjectManagement.com readers, from book reviewers, and from my editor (who is also my wife). Patty edits virtually everything I write and does an outstanding job of making my work better.

Through my career as an author, I had to learn how to be a graceful recipient of feedback—and constructively decide what to do with it. Regardless of how painful the feedback was to hear, I had to recognize it was for my own good.

There are four paths a feedback recipient could take:

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My wife Patty and I some time back completed a massive renovation on a townhome in the Seattle area.   The townhome was built in the late 70's and was decorated using all of the finest materials that the Disco era had to offer.  The original owners liked it so much that they changed precisely nothing for the 30 years they lived there right down to the 8-track player on the guest room night stand.  We purchased the townhome in late 2009 with the intention of renovating the townhome and occupying it after our son graduated high school.

One of my favorite family movies is Mary Poppins. My grown kids will still tell you that my favorite part was watching Dick Van Dyke’s character Bert dance with the animated penguins. (Even as I type this, I have a smile on my face just thinking about his facial expressions as he flopped around in his sagging pants.)

 Aside from Van Dyke’s talent as a dancer, there was something else about Bert’s character that interested me: Bert was a one-man band, chalk artist, chimney sweep, and kite salesperson. The jobs had little in common other than the fact that Bert had skills that enabled him to perform each job.

While Bert may have been happy doing each of the jobs, it doesn’t appear on the surface that there was any intentionality to his job choices. Having a wayward approach to career changes worked great in the movie, but it might not work so well in your professional life.

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So let’s say you went through the 12 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Becoming an Independent Consultant—and you still want to take the plunge. This article will give you the must-do items to complete before opening your doors.

It’s common to be excited about getting your consultancy going and landing that first gig—passion is great! But you absolutely need to get a few things in order first. I can’t stress this enough: If you skip over considering the 10 steps below, you are setting yourself up for potentially big problems later. This is a “measure twice, cut once” thing. (I think you get my point by now…)

My experience is setting up a U.S. company in the state of Washington. You should use the advisors and other suggestions that are right for your consultancy’s location.

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During winter my hands tend to dry out and get chapped.  One night when my hands felt like sandpaper I asked my wife if she had any hand lotion.  "Sure, what kind do you want?" she asked.  "The hand lotion kind," I said like the knuckle-dragger I am.  She then handed me an ice bucket which contained the following:

I've done a lot of thinking about knowledge and wisdom. Many use the term interchangeably. Couldn't be further from the truth. Here are my 12 key differences:

In The Secret to Managing RAID Effectively (Part 1), I introduced the RAID 101 model, which articulates the interrelationships between risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies. The model has six main components:

1. Assumptions are factors about the project that you expect to go a certain way for the project to be successful.
2. Dependencies are situations where forces external to your project can impact or be impacted by your project from a scope, schedule or cost perspective.
3. Unplanned potential problems are things that could happen to impact scope, schedule or budget but weren’t defined at the project’s outset.
4. Managed risks are comprised of assumptions, dependencies, previously identified risks, and unplanned potential problems.
5. Unplanned realized problems are scope, schedule and budget problems that can no longer be mitigated and need to be addressed as an issue.
6. Managed issues are comprised of managed risks that couldn’t be mitigated and unplanned realized problems.

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In my four decades as a professional, I’ve worked as a consultant at Accenture, hired consultants at Microsoft, and engaged with many clients while running my own firm. I’ve seen consulting from many different vantage points—some very positive, others not so much.

Of all these, I have by far enjoyed working in my own consultancy the most. I’m in no way trying to dismiss Accenture or Microsoft; I’m still on friendly terms with them, and strongly advocate them as employers. But going off on my own worked out best for me.

Hanging your own shingle is a bit like a bungee jump: it’s exciting, exhilarating and scary all at the same time. I’ve learned that branching off as an independent consultant isn’t for everyone, and that the most important first step anyone could take is to do some honest introspection on whether being an independent consultant is for him or her.

To that end, I have developed 12 questions that I believe are important to ask if you want to be your own consulting boss:

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