Occasionally there are conversations I have that stick in my mind for years and years. One of those such conversations was when I met up for lunch with a former-BBC and Microsoft colleague Mark a few years ago. "It's not a sales funnel," said Mark. "It's a sales sieve." Mark explained that whilst sales teams … Continue reading The sales sieve
Category: Management
In the last article, I explored the idea of the diverse groups of people who are the consumers of the services that are provided by an internal technology group, whether an IT or Digital team (or any of the many variants in between. This time around I’ll start to explore a few of those different … Continue reading The Tech Team Value Prop – jobs to be done
I've had a few months now out of running an in-house technology team to be able to start to reflect on the experience. One thing that is particularly notable, and this is true of technology teams and many other professions too is the prevalence of the proverb of Physician, heal thyself. Put simply, too often … Continue reading The Tech Team Value Prop – Customers
I've known about the Freudian concept of the Narcissism of Small Differences for many years, and it's a concept that I see around me all too often. In simple terms, Freud argued that groups of people who to everyone else seem all but identical will get extremely het up about what makes them different from … Continue reading Narcissistic
Back in the early days of my career, deciding to do something new with information technology was an expensive business. Before you did anything, you needed hardware; servers to run things on, and software to run on those servers. The things you required arrived in boxes, even the software in the form back then of … Continue reading Technology as transport
Back in October 2019, in those days we fondly remember as "before Covid" I joined RHP, a relatively small social housing provider based in South West London that provides around 6,500 rented homes to people in the area in which I've lived for the last 17 years. I have learned a huge amount in that … Continue reading On housing
We don’t really talk much about finishing jobs. There’s a whole industry about starting new jobs - the first 90 days and all that jazz. But how to finish up - well… Searching the World Wide Web it’s notable how starting a job is framed positively, yet if you search for finishing up an old … Continue reading On finishing
On a reasonably regular basis, I get asked to speak at events. I mean, I'm not deluged with offers. And none of them pays me. But it's nice to be wanted. However, requests in the last few months go something like this: Me: Thanks ever so. I'd really like to take part. Full disclosure, though. … Continue reading Crossing the divide
A few weeks ago I posted something vaguely witty on Twitter. This is such a regular occurrence that I can't even remember what it was. It was probably funnier in my head than it was on screen. But some people responded to it. Some Likes. Some Retweets. These aren't important to me (of course they … Continue reading Forget about the bloody water cooler
Over the course of what I self-deprecatingly refer to as my "career" I've worked in and with a large number of different organisations in a very varied number of industry sectors. The sociologist in me finds learning about new organisations utterly fascinating, and quickly being able to pick up the nuance of a new setting … Continue reading Trump cards
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