I was at a big networking event last night; you may know the kind of thing. Captains of Industry - predominantly middle-aged, overweight men - talking too loudly and drinking too much in a swanky venue that's usually the haunt of beautiful people. Very entertaining, but something of a clash of cultures for me (and … Continue reading Lies, damned lies and zombie statistics
Category: Cult of measurement
Here's a question - what's more ecologically sustainable... a physical telephone directory, or a phone book smartphone app? At base level, the "death to paper" technologist will say the printed telephone directory claiming dead trees and non-biodegradable plastic packaging. In retort, the telephone directory publisher will respond that (somewhat incredulously) that a smart phone uses … Continue reading Infinitely measured
There was an interesting nugget that I recently read in Clay Christensen's "How will you measure your life?" about the impact of high performer management fast track programmes: that they train leaders in organisations to be less innovative. Christensen (who is probably best known for his earlier book "The Innovator's Dilemma") argues that such streaming … Continue reading The fast track to zero innovation
I'm not a great fan of the type of management consulting that is typified by organisations like McKinsey (too often it merely represents the wrong sort of management delegation from my lowly viewpoint), but there are many things of value that come from the work of such firms. A case in point is the 7-S … Continue reading Dodging silver bullets
Numbers are an incredibly inhuman abstract construct. It's no coincidence that for some primitive tribespeople numbering systems progressed no further than "1, 2, many". Whilst pootling through the lanes of west Pembrokeshire this afternoon I heard the broadcaster Paddy O'Connell give a good demonstration of our appalling ability to handle things numeric. Standing in for … Continue reading Number blind
LinkedIn, or Facebook for boring people, is celebrating it's 200 millionth subscriber by informing people who sit in the top 1% of viewed profiles and top 5% of viewed profiles of that exciting news. I fall in the 1%. Which tells me a few things... Firstly, that "top 1%" sounds an awful lot better than … Continue reading One in 2 million: my part in the LinkedIn story
According to the most recent episode of BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme, 2013 is going to be a very significant year in the world of food packaging: it's the year in which a government-sponsored, voluntary (but consistent) scheme for labelling food will be introduced, giving a traffic light system for giving consumers an at-a-glance … Continue reading Fifty Shades of Amber
So as to redress the balance, alongside the stats and facts approach, I thought it worth a little time for some slightly more subjective opinions to tell my story of 2012. It's undoubtedly been a year of change. On January 1st I had a team of over a dozen people, a focus on marketing to … Continue reading 2012 – the subjective view
There are a few key things that stand out from my memories of my University academic studies, and one of them is the ideas behind a book written in 1958 by Michael Young (father, I found out this morning, of journalist Toby) called The Rise of Meritocracy. In Young's satire, he paints a picture of … Continue reading Data enslavement
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