Category: General

I wrote last week about the dangers of confusing measurements with objectives. It was with a mix of anger and bemusement that I watched a news item on the BBC last night that perfectly illustrated by way that the coalition government has shafted itself in pandering to the readership of the Daily Mail. The government … Continue reading Measuring stupidly

So, there we go. Three months, 48 photos, and what have we learned? Well, that there is some interesting stuff to look at if you just raise your gaze. And that I seem to have a slightly unhealthy interest in trains (blame 20 years of knowing @tallnohair and 20 months of knowing @commutr). All the … Continue reading #summerlookedup

My delightful, nearly ten-month old son yesterday ate his first blackberry. Unfortunately not the bramble-variety (he loves those, particularly with apple and pear). This was one of the larger, Canadian ones; my life's slightly aged 8000-series. Oscar somehow managed to tooth and gum his way through the keyboard. Whilst the on button still works, nothing … Continue reading Unnecessary and useless lard-arse bloatware

Project achievements included: - exploration of tools for creative collaboration - the Dearborn office enabled for Google Docs - and initial scoping for network and server refresh Additionally: - some great time spent with people across the New York and Detroit offices - catching up with my old boss from Reuters - experiencing the build … Continue reading Weeknote 15 – in which I went Stateside

Whilst it's really important to know that, if you are trying to achieve something, you're making progress towards the objective. However, increasingly we seem to be in a world cursed by a plague of measuring things that are easy to measure. There was an article in Advertising Age today which came up in conversation with … Continue reading Measuring for the sake of it

Project achievements included: - another tranche of BES user migrations - some great early observations from our Docs and Sites piloting - contracts finalised on our managed network project - great progress on a company-wide positioning initiative - steps towards the start of the managed print services project Additionally: - invited to speak at a … Continue reading Weeknote 14 – in which contracts were finalised

Some good conversations yesterday, firstly with an academic researcher we've been working with recently, and then at lunch with former-BBC colleague Dan Merriott. Some links were made in those chats that haven't quite lined up for me before now. A number of years ago I was introduced to Ken Blanchard's Situational Leadership model, the basic … Continue reading Hiding from control freaks

We've been doing some initial trialling across the business with Google Docs and Google Sites, and here's a brief summary of thoughts and observations so far... Team working tools will only have an impact in teams that have a sense of team This might seem a bit bleedin' obvious, but it is fundamental. If you … Continue reading Thoughts so far on Google Docs & Sites

At the Google CIO event at which I spoke recently, Robin Williamson gave a talk about the companies nine principals of innovation. One of these central rules (the best known being the 20% innovation time) is "morph, don't kill" innovations. Williamson, who is one of Google's European senior engineering people, gave examples to illustrate this … Continue reading Stopping Projects

Britain in the sun... ah, but if only.