Day 53 – 21 March 2014
There is more light than dark. Spring has sprung yet it’s not very spring like outside. It was cold and windy when I left home.
First up was a meeting with a doctor from Dryburn Hospital to talk about Big Data. After I’d explained to him what the expression actually meant we were away. He’s been involved in developing a health portal for three thousand staff to provide services for over six hundred thousand people. The plan is to combine data from multiple sources into a single view for customers both for their own use and the medical teams. There are some parallels in some of the developments we’re trying to deliver.
The data they were bringing together was able to highlight health issues outside of what the patient had originally been diagnosed with. As I’ve said, there are stories within our data just waiting to be told.
At this stage I’m wanting to get like-minded people together, those who can understand the possibilities of Big data and today I’ve added another one to the list.
The majority of today however was set aside for an away day with my Senior Management Team, or Senior Leadership team as we should be striving towards.
By the way the beard balance has been tipped in favour of hirsute within the team as Bob is now sporting a manly growth.
We had a deep and productive discussion about where we want to go over the next few years. I think that we need to be a customer business that works in ICT (mainly) rather than a technology business with customers. We need to make it as easy as possible for customers to deal with us, by being demand led, understand flow, remove barriers and add value.
Our people need to be empowered, trusted, skilled in customer focus, skilled in technology, agile and interchangeable so our management needs to be highly visible, highly available and highly engaged. The focus must be on encouragement, development and enabling understanding.
As for technology, which I must admit is not my prime area of expertise (eh?), we can look forward to a period of great change, much more than we have seen already. But people may not be able to change as quickly which could result in a gulf of expectation between what the market can deliver and what can be absorbed. Whatever happens we are going to have some technologies that we must love to death and some we will have to let go.
OK, I’m not saying that we are not many of these things already but rather that we need to be all of these things.
I only had fifteen meetings this week over four days: 32% of the time was with customers; 60% with my team and; 8% with others and suppliers.
Learning points for today: You can get a smart ontology engine (if you want one); it takes many times to come to a final decision and; SVGA cables come in male/male and male/female but not female/female.
Today’s enjoyment rating 9/10 – It’s always good to talk.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 