strategy

When we bring people together to look at the issues we have, they come up with all sorts of crackpot ideas.  Why is that?  Perhaps they are working blind.  Perhaps they don’t know the scale and complexity because they don’t have access to the underlying data and information.  They simply don’t know.  Perhaps we overcomplicate … Continue reading Is our data good enough to give away?

Dawn showed us some picture or rather she didn’t.  She handed them out to us face down.  It was all part of a warm up exercise for our day talking about elephants, the ones we all know are there yet somehow can’t get round to talking about. The rules were quite simple.  You were not … Continue reading From a crown to a pale blue dot

I owe this one to a Twitter conversation. I get involved in them from time to time.  This one was with Mark and Steve and Mark and Peter and of course, me.  It started with a response to one of my blogs on report writing though it is a subject that has come up before. … Continue reading Let’s become a craicocratic organisation

I don't think I have ever been the world's greatest report writer.  I much prefer to talk ideas through than to write them down.  That may seem to be an odd thing to say as a blogger yet I think my writing style is more conversational than formal.  My blog attempts to speak to the … Continue reading Open Data Report

I see you can get an in-ear translation device.  It is called the Pilot from a company called Unilad.  It reminded me very much like the babel fish from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Life is imitating art?  It goes in your ear like a hearing aid and a person can speak to you … Continue reading Language translation

I’ve been using a Tiger Woods story in this round of presentations.  I lifted it from the Happy Manifesto by Henry Stewart.  Apparently plagiarism is the finest form of flattery. Back in 2009 he was asked in by Fortune magazine what the best piece of advice was he ever got.  He said that ‘When I was … Continue reading A sort of golf story

We got the whole of the extended management team together today to talk about our new ways of working.  It’s the first time that we’ve really given it a good go as a single group.  We’ve talked about it many times as individuals and in smaller meetings but not with everyone. It was a great … Continue reading The colour of culture

My boss is leaving this week.  He is retiring after forty years in public service.  I will miss him as I’ve been working both for him and with him for half a dozen years now.  All good things must come to pass however and I wish him well in whatever he ends up doing. Of … Continue reading About the people

If I had my time over again I would have done more art at school.  I would have studied languages as well as mathematics more.  I would have tried harder, experienced more things, studied more and made the most of the opportunity that a decent education offers. These are not regrets but if I had … Continue reading Creativity is not just art

A lot of my more formative years were spent in logistics in both the automotive aftermarket and later in office products.  We called it distribution when I started. I was interested in how this industry closed the gap between suppliers and consumers.  You cannot sell anything unless you can get it to market.  I am … Continue reading That’s logistics