Category Archives: Uncategorized

Today my son walked to school on his own. As of tomorrow, he will walk back on his own too. What happens if he hurts himself? What happens if he’s late? It’s frightening, but also a proud moment! He is growing up and wants to be independent. I adopted, without knowing it, a kaizen approach,Continue reading “How do you manage a huge change?”

For remote workers, does every meeting have to be via video? Old story, especially since lockdown and all the promotion of “walk and talk”. I’ll apply the 80/20 rule in that 80% of your meetings are via video and 20% are via phone, although I reckon I’m being generous. Surely, if it’s just a chat,Continue reading “What happened to the ☎️?”

Did you have to go somewhere earlier today, maybe work or possibly a shop to grab a coffee? If not, imagine you did (it’s more fun that way!). How did you get there? Did you have to drive? Walk? Cycle? Public Transport? A mixture of the above? Were there any checkpoints e.g. buying a ticket,Continue reading “How was your journey this morning?”

Or have we? In 1997, Steve Jobs answered a question where he nailed the modern-day philosophy regarding customer experience, that this should be the starting point and technology if required, comes in at the end, only as an enabler. It is one of the most shown videos on LinkedIn, so I won’t hit you withContinue reading “The customer experience: 25 years and we still haven’t got it?”

I sometimes say this when I am with the sponsor / senior stakeholder when I am trying to understand what the requirements are and what outcomes are identified. Working out what is really needed, without trying to guess what solution you are probably going to go for (my good friend Frank McGeady used to callContinue reading ““Let’s take technology out of the room””

A positive legacy is very important and I always, with my sporting hat on, relate it to the Olympics. Notably, Barcelona in 1992 and Athens in 1996 were heavily criticised for creating ‘white elephants’, meaning they built infrastructure for the Games that were, unfortunately, hardly / never used again. Your strategy needs to be moreContinue reading “What legacy do you want your strategy to have?”

My son has the mumps. He has been very brave and is now starting to recover. The public sector sometimes gets a bad reputation for helping its citizens (especially if you read ‘The Daily Mail’ / ‘The Daily Express’). But we (especially Dylan), as a family, have been served well. The 111 service that weContinue reading “Joined-up services in the public sector — are we getting there?”

– To Do?– Things?– Planner?– Reminders?– Todoist?– Pen and paper? The list of solutions seems endless (especially digitally), and they cater for individual / collaborative tasks. Many are dependent too on what platform you use e.g. they only work on iOS. The main problem, I have found to my detriment, is that I have spentContinue reading “What productivity tool do you use?”

· Is it time?· Is it the resources that are made available to you?· Maybe it’s managing third parties?· Or possibly scope creep? There will be many more, but these are all risks and issues that can be managed, via a rigorous risk management philosophy. Undertaking a Risk Management exercise throughout the lifecycle of aContinue reading “What’s the hardest thing to manage in a programme or project?”

“20/20” is a reply I have heard many times, which is good (I am all for healthy eyesight!) but is not really what I want to hear when speaking to a Director, CEO or CIO. I would prefer to hear, either, “we haven’t got one” or “yes we have, and its ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’.Continue reading “What’s your vision?”