Be more firefighter

We are constantly confronting the need for change in our organisations. Change at an institutional level, at a team level all the way down to the actions and behaviours of individuals. The world around us is mutating, and we need to adapt to accommodate that change. Yet if you ask people why they can't change, … Continue reading Be more firefighter

The Word Cloud Game

It's been a week of interviewing as part of research with a client. And for the first time I've been using Otter.ai to record the conversations. We've been playing around with Otter for a while to do transcriptions and help with editing on WB-40, but this is the first time I've used it to help with … Continue reading The Word Cloud Game

Virtual rooms

Anyone who regularly delivers workshops or presentations will know the massive impact that the layout of a room will have on the session. An audience laid out in the lines of a theatre auditorium will be in receive mode.  Put them around tables in "Cabaret" style and they'll talk to one another more readily. Put … Continue reading Virtual rooms

The evolution of digital work

For some years now I've been using the analogy of the music industry to explore how digitalization can have varying stages. It goes a little something like this. Prior to digital, music was distributed by performance, then printed sheet music, then through vinyl (and to some extent tape). The first wave of digital saw the … Continue reading The evolution of digital work

Workplace Safety

There are three things converging in my working life at the moment: Government client work on delivering modern IT services is at last at the point where we are starting to deliver actual technology into the hands of actual people who aren't in the technology team. My work has been to help shape the activities … Continue reading Workplace Safety

Some games to play

I've been working on developing a product. An actual physical thing that you can hold in your hands. It's a set of playing cards. I call them CIO Priorities. The idea has been gestating for a while: I spend a lot of my time talking with and looking at what technology leaders in organisations do … Continue reading Some games to play

The collaboration arms race

Yesterday at their I/O conference, Google announced a couple of new developments that place Simulated Intelligence technologies into the world of collaborative platforms. The first, Smart Compose, extends out the quick response features already available in Google Inbox from a single line message (usually things like "Thanks!" or "I'm running late!") into full-blown messages. The … Continue reading The collaboration arms race

Digital parking

Parking in the UK is a big business. In 2015-2016, according to research undertaken by the RAC Foundation, UK local authorities charged motorists in excess of £1.5bn and generating a cash surplus of around £0.75bn for parking their cars. But the process of paying for parking is a ramshackle and expensive affair. There are pay … Continue reading Digital parking

#noIT

When did you last spend some serious thinking time devoted to electric motors? Since getting up I have brushed my teeth, shaved, turned on the dishwasher, seen cars pass me on the walk to the station and boarded a train into London. All have depended on electric motors and yet for the most part we … Continue reading #noIT