There's a reasonably well-known principle in software engineering circles called Chesterton's Fence. The idea, borrowed from the writer G.K. Chesterton, is simple: don't remove a fence until you understand why it was put there. It's become a useful corrective to the "move fast and break things" mentality — a reminder that the people who came before … Continue reading Chesterton’s Hedge
Category: General
Over the past two weeks, I’ve been doing a civic duty as a juror at the local Crown Court. Before starting last week, I’d become a bit concerned that I would be spending quite a bit of time looking at how society goes wrong. I studied enough Criminology at university to know that poverty, drug … Continue reading Civic duty
I am, however I look at it, getting quite old. I'm old enough to remember the 1970s and the Christmas present I received, a CBM Electronic Calculator. I was amazed by how I could enter numbers and symbols, and the machine would return correct calculations. I'm old enough to remember the first experience at home … Continue reading Technonovelty
For many years, I've had a pet theory that you can tell a huge amount about the culture and values of an organisation from what you see and experience in their office reception area. Some examples: A large insurance company I visited in the City of London some years ago had toilets available for visitors … Continue reading Software as signs
Back in my mid-thirties, as you may already know, I spent a couple of years employed in the world of management and leadership development. I spent my days working with managers from across all sorts of organisations and at all sorts of levels helping them to discover better ways in which they could lead and … Continue reading Situational AI
Eight or so years ago, I was doing some work for a UK law firm. At the time, across the legal industry, there was considerable interest in AI, primarily machine learning, to automate high-volume work such as commercial conveyancing for mortgage lenders. Ultimately, the aim was to reduce costs. I remember a conversation with one … Continue reading A benchmark for AI
This week I have learned: what the heck deep research actually is in the LLM tools. It's been useful already. how nice it was to catch up with former colleagues from Microsoft earlier in the week. Microsoft was a pretty torrid period in my career. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. … Continue reading Weeknote 739: deep research
This week I have learned: never assume that people are managing up, out or around. Stakeholder management needs to be intentional at all times. factor in a few iterations if you are delivering a report. Hopefully before the end of the initiative. in a strange course of events, Random the Book has a new format. … Continue reading Weeknote 724 – and then there were none
This year, as with most years, I've been busy on my Kindle. Here are some of my reading highlights from the past 12 months (books not necessarily from 2024, but purchased and read this year). Fake Heroes: Ten False Icons and How they Altered the Course of History Otto English This is a great book, … Continue reading 2024 Bookshelf
I ran a workshop this week for colleagues from across our consulting organisation. I wanted to find a way to allow people to explore an idea without being too constrained by their own views. I also wanted people to identify tangible actions that they could take away and do.The theme for this workshop was improving … Continue reading Multiple Perspective Futures – a workshop tool
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