The National Audit Office yesterday published a fascinating paper examining the role that contract and consulting staff play within central government and the broader civil service. I found it a somewhat depressing read. The short version: contractors and consultants can be used to help bring in resource on a short-term basis to add skills or capacity when … Continue reading Interchangeable units of resource
Category: Themes
Many years ago, when the Chairman of the company I worked for at the time needed convincing that it would be OK to shift our email services out into the Cloud with Google I used this argument: "We trust our most important asset to the Clouds run by the banks, right? There's no cash being stuffed … Continue reading Trusting Clouds
As previously announced last year, with a bunch of fellow free-range freelance professionals, we are coming together to form a community to help each other, share experiences, and generally see how we might make each others' professional lives a bit more enjoyable and effective. There is already a LinkedIn group up and running and on Thursday February … Continue reading Free Range Gathering
I can't draw. Well, not very well at least. There's one massive psychological block I've got to drawing, and that stems back to when my O Level art teacher, Miss Moon, told me outright just before my exams "You've got a reasonable eye, Matt. The problem is you can't draw." That kind of stuck. But, … Continue reading Sketch lines
Over the past few months I've been immersing myself in the world of collaboration and organizational sharing. Here are the books that have been helping me along the way... Danah Boyd It’s Complicated an anthropological investigation of how teenagers use social networks Peter Checkland & Sue Holwell Information, systems & information systems a primer on … Continue reading #sharingorg bibliography
I had a fascinating conversation this morning with the HR Director of a large engineering company as part of my #sharingorg research. He has been helping to foster a change in how his organisation collaborates internally and externally, necessitated by changes in the markets in which the company operates (they're big in mineral commodities, mineral commodities … Continue reading Living the values
I spent a lot of time driving over the Winter break, and as a result had a lot of time to think as we hurtled down the French péage road network. Ironically, I seemed to be thinking a great deal about the challenges faced by self-driving cars... What has struck me is, as ever, the … Continue reading Changing lanes
To get to the top you need to network upwards. Focus on your superiors. Get the promotions. Climb the ladder (or shin up the greasy pole). Trouble is, as you progress your way up the pyramid, kicking and shoving your way past your peers, the number of people above you gets smaller and smaller. Your … Continue reading Networking upwards
It's time for the annual report into what was popular of the stuff wot I wrote. In reverse order... 20. The transparent consumer Earlier in the year I needed to get a new home telephone and broadband contract. So I took to Twitter to find one. The results were unsurprisingly predictable until they became unpredictably surprising. … Continue reading 2015 – another year of blogging
It's that time of the year when pundits start taking their crystal balls down from the shelves and giving them a good polish as they start to wheel out their predictions for the year ahead. The more outlandish the prediction, the more coverage it gets. The more outlandish the prediction, the more chance it's total … Continue reading Polishing my crystal balls
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