Last week before my body and mind decided that enough was enough I was lucky enough to spend some time with Stu working on a periodic refresh of our Workplace Strategy. The focus so far has been on defining the scope of the strategy and working with our key partners...
My Dad used to love making, in his garage he had a collection of tools and materials that were acquired from decades of scavenging the industrial waste bins of the his crane making employer. He had racks of nut’s, bolts, screws, switches, lights, pipes, brackets and on and on. It...
I’m a big fan of the idea of reducing the work week. Long working hours give us the false impression of getting a lot of work done, but the evidence doesn’t support this. I’ve worked long hours, I think they make us lazy and causes a whole load of social...
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. ...
As readers of this blog know I have some health challenges and have certainly had my fair share of issues with the existing healthcare provision in the UK. I’ve been forced to largely take ownership of my own care, because the NHS has poor execution of integrated care. I’m not...
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’d been feeling tired all week, but yesterday at lunch time, my finger tips started tingling, not a good sign. By 13:00 I’d taken pain killers to keep me going and to be able to drive, by 14:00 I was struggling to keep my thoughts straight but hung on for...
As I was driving along the prom today I saw a JCB and a couple of guys shovelling sand off the pavements. A job that not too long ago I’m sure would have been done by the owners of the Hotels that line the prom. A job that each hotel...
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...