In 2014 and 2015 I spent much of my time being treated for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia by the fantastic oncology and haematology team at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Along with intravenous chemotherapy, I received intrathecal chemotherapy to treat leukaemia infiltration in my central nervous system (injections of chemotherapy into my spinal cord), radiotherapy to treat…
Be more Raleigh, Drake and Columbus – Maybe SMART goals aren’t always smart.
When the great explorers like Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake and Christopher Columbus set out on their voyages of discovery, they didn’t limit their opportunity by setting constraints and restrictive boundaries around what they were to do, they simply headed off into the unknown in the belief that they could find lands, people and treasures that…
Visualizing and Adapting to Dynamic, Emergent Ecosystems
In the beginning there was the Supply Chain In the early 2000’s I had the good fortune to create the initial business capability release strategy for E2Open.com, the world’s largest web-enabled supply chain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E2open)) At the height of the Internet boom, a company could be the darlings of Wall Street one day, and non-existent the…
Visualising my step count: bars and lines together add insights
The Storytelling with Data Challenge for May 2019 was to collect our own data and visualise it. I started wanting to know how many days I had walked 10,000 steps or more. So I downloaded my fitbit data for the last 30 days. As I work some days and provide childcare on others as well…
Visualize Strategic Intent
As the digital era becomes entrenched, while many companies are focused on mere survival, a few vanguard companies thrive. The vanguards are structured to efficiently handle change in all facets of their business simultaneously. These companies can adapt because they have developed instruments and capabilities to sense changes in their environment along with the…
Creating Shared Context
Context Curation As the digital era becomes entrenched, while many companies are focused on mere survival, a few vanguard companies thrive. These companies are vanguard because they understand the importance of coherence in vision and objectives throughout all layers of their organization, from the executive ranks to operations. Everyone in their boat understands their role…
Why do you invest in IT? Delivering the benefits of change
I’ve been a Change Manager for over 20 years, working in blue chip organisations incl Tesco, Shop Direct and SpecSavers. I have a particular interest in the alignment of programmes with business objectives and managing the delivery of benefit. In this blog I’d like to share my thoughts & the experiences I’ve had with anyone…
HiveMind Values – A Member’s Opinion
I’ve just joined the HiveMind network. While waiting for the confirmatory interview I was invited to review the network’s values. During the interview, it was made clear that confirmation was contingent upon my agreeing to these ‘values’. It is conventional for contemporary organisations to equip themselves with a set of espoused values, just as HiveMind…
Trapped in an evolutionary time-warp: how human genetics sabotage modern organisations
“Thus, the task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.” Arthur Schopenhauer: 1851 Modern organisations are a human creation. This design is anchored by genetics and has prevailed for thousands of years. People are hard-wired to perpetuate…
What’s The Buzz? – “Sakura” and Culture Transformation
“Samazamano Koto omoidasu Sakurakana” – Many things, the cherry blossoms put me in mind of by Matsuo Bashou (the creator of Haiku) Cherry blossoms are a symbolic flower of the spring, the fleeting nature of life, and a time of renewal. The sakura, or cherry blossom, holds special significance in Japanese culture. While North American…
