Category: General

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.

Project achievements included: - cloud-hosted BES deployment began (c. 50 people now over)  - contract negotiations on our network project for London - technical proof of concept paving the way for Windows 7 and a new notebook supplier - initial engagement on a major benefits dependency exercise Additionally: - second release of our change management procedures … Continue reading Weeknote 12 – in which gears shifted

On many occasions through my career I've heard people tell me that they have given up with planning, because external factors would always intervene which would break the original plan. This is a bit like saying that you won't plan out a route on a map before a car journey because there will probably be … Continue reading Navigating through projects

At the end of last week I had an interesting insight into how online, collaborative documents might change the way people in different organisations work together. I had a small software development requirement and needed to quickly get a quote from a prospective supplier. I had briefed our account manager, and he arranged for a … Continue reading Collaborative documents

Project achievements included: - decommissioning of the London secondary machine room - starting the evaluation of new laptop supplier - setting up for the final stages of the London networks project Additionally: - good sessions with the European CEO... - ...and his US equivalent - beginning to see the benefits of Google Docs when working … Continue reading Weeknote 11 – in which I made it into a national newspaper