For most of my 25 years in IT there’s been a yawning gulf between customers and users. Customers, the people who paid the bills, were rarely very passionate about the IT that they were buying for their users. They wanted low cost, standard solutions from reputable manufacturers, with predictable roadmaps. ...
I‘ve long been a believer in sharing or narrating my work, my first attempt was using VAX Notes probably 20 years ago, then I moved on to detailed highlight reports (that I continue to this day) but my real focus has been blogging. After a good start about 10 years...
I’ve been mainly occupied today working on the next evolution of our organisation, which comprises several thousand people supporting a couple of hundred customers globally. I did most of this work at Caffe Nero in Preston, working on my laptop, but I worked through the ideas with a senior manager...
Many years ago I had the misfortune to have a presentation I gave critiqued by a key customer’s IT Director. It was a pretty devastating experience at the time, but it taught me a very important lesson, the importance of attention to detail. Not that I’m much better at creating...
I’ve been messing around with Twitter and Facebook today. I like to share what I read and write, but I don’t like that information cluttering up my main Twitter account that I use for my diary. I’ve concluded that I need to have three Twitter accounts: @SteveRichards – this is...
I consider one of the secrets of my ‘success’ to be a determination to keep busy. For most of my life I’d never even considered that there was an option, through school and university and most of my working life I always had too much to do, someone else kept...
All through my working career I’ve noticed that the best people are both incredibly focussed and easily distracted. Which doesn’t make sense, until you remember that in many areas of work (especially high end knowledge work) demands are rarely smooth. The best people focus intensely on the demands of today,...
If you listen to very accomplished people they often tell you to follow your passion. Passion they insist is the secret to success. Find your passion and then keep driving towards it, never give up. Sorry, but this advise has never worked for me, life is too unpredictable and our...
I’m heading for the Northern Lakes again next week and I’m in a reflective mood, last month when I was there I was listening to Commander Chris Hadfields musings on life and I was deeply impressed. Since finishing the book, I’ve been applying some of the lessons he taught and...
I had a very late night last night trying to finish my backlog of document/appraisal reviews and admin before 10 days holiday, but I was up at 6:30 as usual, because I believe in always getting up at the same time (which helps me go to sleep the next night). ...