A quick set of field notes from a retro we ran this week to talk about an adapted facilitation technique called Brainwalking. This approach is perfect for allowing all involved to have a say on issues without having to talk over one another. Brain walking Brain walking was introduced to me by my wonderful colleague … Continue reading Brain walking Retro
Category: Management
Some years ago, in my first exploration of the world of virtual reality, I contrived to introduce a group of senior lawyers into what now is occasionally being called the Metaverse. I'd managed to spend a bit of their money buying an HTC Vive rig, and at their annual partner conference was inviting them to … Continue reading See what happens…
Last week I spent a bit of time with some of my Executive colleagues thinking about the way in which we understand and foster relationships with people who work for our clients. Our business, like many in the professional services space, depends on relationships between people. The ways in which we establish, foster and maintain … Continue reading Tracking client relations
I've been thinking about teams recently, and in particular the types of teams that are brought together where nobody really knows anyone beforehand, but where they are expected to start work and be productive pretty much immediately. Take, for example, flight crews on aircraft, particularly with bigger airlines. Everyone has a role to perform: pilots … Continue reading Model teams
Over the past few weeks, I've been writing about how internal technology teams, whether IT, Digital or other permutations, might look at themselves though a service value lens to better understand what they do in the eyes of their "customers". If you haven't seen the articles, they are here, here and here. Last week I … Continue reading The tech team value prop – field experiments
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
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
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