Although web and video conferencing might be second nature to many of us these days, in some organisations as they move to cloud-based collaboration platforms like Office 365 or Google G Suite, on-demand, at the desktop video and screen sharing tools might be a novelty. Even in organisations that have had access to these types … Continue reading Running effective online meetings
Category: Management
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
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
Another review and reworking of hints gleaned from the book Remote for a client I'm currently working with, here are some handy hints on how to support working when you don't have everyone in the same office at the same time... - make sure there is time-overlap as to the hours that people work/work in the … Continue reading Agile/Flexible/Smart working tips
Just down the road from us is a posh gym and leisure centre called the Lensbury Club. The affluent townsfolk of Teddington congregate there at the weekend to avoid the hoi polloi in the local municipal. I've visited on a few occasions and it's all very nice, although there something of the air of a staff … Continue reading The rediscovery of well being
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
It's a year of anniversaries of five. This month see five years of working under the banner of Stamp. This October will mark five squared years of me in full time work. When I ventured into the world of office work in the autumn of 1993 it was a very different place to that that … Continue reading Has nobody noticed yet?
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
So apparently Theresa May has asked her Brexit subcommittee to go away and think a bit harder about their two proposed solutions to the post-Brexit EU border and customs problem. One of the two approaches has been summarised as: A 'highly streamlined' customs arrangement - This would minimise customs checks rather than getting rid of … Continue reading Problem-less solutions
We are obsessed with being busy. Think about how you answer the question "How are you?", particularly at work, these days... "Rushed off my feet!" "Back to back!" "Swimming not drowing!" and other such epithets. We use busy-ness as a sign of importance, of status. Of Godliness. The Protestant Work Ethic has a lot to … Continue reading The curse of busy-ness
