In the next hour I'll be handing over my staff pass, my laptop and my phone, and getting the TVP shuttle bus to Reading Station as I leave Microsoft for the last time as an employee. It's a time of mixed emotions; in many ways last Friday, the last day that my kids attended the … Continue reading Thoughts on leaving
Category: Themes
So it's time for another chapter in my career to open. Two years and five months after starting, it's time to gracefully exit, stage left from Microsoft. It's been a fascinating time. Remarkably, when I joined in March 2011, only the first inklings of the company's future product set were public (or even private internal) … Continue reading Leap, and a net will appear*
The admissions from the Metropolitan Police this week about the Ian Tomlinson case, where an officer was found to have used unauthorised and unnecessary force which led to the newspaper seller's death a few years ago, mark an interesting turning point in our video-surveillance society. Whilst the UK has become one of the most videoed … Continue reading Big brother is us
There was an interesting nugget that I recently read in Clay Christensen's "How will you measure your life?" about the impact of high performer management fast track programmes: that they train leaders in organisations to be less innovative. Christensen (who is probably best known for his earlier book "The Innovator's Dilemma") argues that such streaming … Continue reading The fast track to zero innovation
There was a link to a concept for Twitter redesign posted on the Guardian Tech Blog this morning that made me ponder a broader subject - as established brands and media force deeper into their use of social media, have we seen the end of Web 2.0? The first iteration of the world wide web … Continue reading The end of 2.0?
A few evenings ago I was giving a friend of mine a bit of advice. She'd been asked to, as a "career development opportunity" (alongside her day job) to create a digital channel strategy for her organisation. One of the topics that came up was the subject of telephone helpdesks, and specifically whether helpdesk callers … Continue reading Hanging on the telephone
One of the many things that I learned when I spent a couple of years working for a small consulting firm in the mid-00s was the importance of the second person pronoun. To be honest, given the paucity of my education in grammar at school, I had to look that one up: basically "you" and … Continue reading It’s not me, it’s you
Some thoughts on Tiny Data by me on Computer Weekly...
I'm not a great fan of the type of management consulting that is typified by organisations like McKinsey (too often it merely represents the wrong sort of management delegation from my lowly viewpoint), but there are many things of value that come from the work of such firms. A case in point is the 7-S … Continue reading Dodging silver bullets
One of the things I've learned fairly early on in the journey that is parenting is that kids tend to want something more if it's not available to them. With my sons, this becomes particularly apparent when one is playing with a particular toy: that toy seems to often become the most desirable object in … Continue reading The power of scarcity
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