Back in the days before social networks, us Gen Xers used to do most of the stuff that we do today on Facebook and Twitter using email. Pictures of cats existed before the era of the social networks; email was social without the like buttons. Every so often I would send a joke of my … Continue reading Going viral
Part of my week last week found me with a group of project delivery people from across the organisation of one of my clients. The discussion revolved for much of the day around a thorny challenge: the group has been tasked with forming a broader community of practice around project management, but how do you … Continue reading Side projects
Things I have learned this week: - getting project people to think about things that aren't tasks is a fundamental challenges - getting big organisations to contract with small organisations is painful - letting go of comfort blankets is tricky - I might now have had my 15 minutes of Interwebs fame... Next week: 5 … Continue reading Weeknote 253: sunglasses
Sitting on the train this morning reading this week's Economist briefing on Silicon Valley made me think one thing above all else. If the techno-utopian vision of a virtual, Artificial Intelligence world is so close, why the heck is so much of the world of technology development focused in such a small and relatively remote … Continue reading The triumph of the PostIts
Today marks the 102nd birthday of my late grandfather Robert Ballantine. It also marks the end of the second year of the Stamp experiment, to a lesser or greater extent a project inspired by Granddad. At this time last year I think I was putting a brave face on things. Many, many positive conversations. Much hope. Very … Continue reading Bertie Day 2015
Things I have learned this week: - old models can still win out, if only by heft and momentum - in the age of the internet you can realise a silly idea in seconds - stopping people from adding everything and the kitchen sink is a challenge - pre-season friendlies are basically an alternate reality … Continue reading Weeknote 252: signals old and new
I have written in the past about how the language that we attach to failing is part of the fundamental challenge of organisations dealing with the ambiguity of the world we are in. Failure is pejorative, so it's no wonder that people find it so hard to embrace. The lessons from the world of agile … Continue reading Happy mistakes
In a panel discussion organised by the global pay-wall provider The Times this week, Baroness Lane-Fox of the Interwebs apparently suggested that the UK government should scrap investment into the HS2 programme in favour of high speed internet infrastructure. She's wrong. We need both. And the irony for me is that both of these initiatives … Continue reading Platforms come in many forms
The more I read about the field of Behavioural Economics the more I think that maybe the entire discipline is an increasingly complex set of workarounds to address the more fundamental issue that the science of economics is failing us. It takes a lot to shift an entire academic discipline's mindset, and the period leading … Continue reading Copernicus
