Shift Happens!� Things change
All has been going really well with the publication of my new book, about project risk management, scheduled for July 2011.
One small fly in the ointment, that�s all…
We�ve changed the name.
Let me tell you the story.
One day, just before Christmas
As I was putting the finishing touches to my text and contemplating starting work on the figures, I got an email out of the blue.
It�s nice to know people are aware of your work, but less so, when the email comes ready-copied to a firm of US lawyers.� We Brits rarely resort to legal threats: not so some folk in the US, it seems.� The stereotype of the dash to litigate has been endorsed.� I was threatened with legal action if I went ahead with publication of a book called Shift Happens!� This was despite the fact that there are already a load of books by that name.
(The threat was not from any of those lovely authors, by the way.)
Ho hum
After replying courteously, I got no response.� Nice touch.� I supressed my �clich� instinct� to believe:
�no news is good news�
and engaged my risk management response of:
�no news is no evidence�
Consulting my publisher, we decided to err on the side of caution.� I don�t think there was any chance of confusion in the market-place, but I wasn�t going to literally bet the house on it. We�ve changed the name.� It�s a�risk appetite thing.
Good news and bad news
The good news is that�Risk Happens! may just be a better title � thank you un-named provocateur.� It will do better in searches, and that matters these days.
The first bit of bad news is that I�m not as keen on the title � semantically, it isn�t quite right and these things matter to me.� I will always know that �risk exists� and �that risks are realised� are semantically better.� And I know that I have been using the phrase �shift happens!� since the mid 1990s.
The second bit of bad news is that this provides one more sad piece of evidence that
�might (in the form of a US law firm)�is right�
and tactics that felt, to me, like bullying were able to succeed.
What have I learned?
Writing a book about risk is not without risk, it seems.� But I choose to to go with Juliet on this one:??
�O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;�
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2
