One of the most important jobs of an Enterprise Architect is to map out the target state for the organisation. Capability mapping is an effective way to drive target-state decisions using objective, clearly-presented information captured from key stakeholders. Business Capabilities A capability is something an organisation does which helps to achieve its business goals. Capabilities…
Strategies for Growth & Innovation: Building Growth Paths with Lego?
Nobody wants to work for an organisation that is not growing. We all want to be in that organisation that has this ambition with the strategy and actions to back it up. So its not surprising that in the program that I was running for organisations as diverse as financial services, publishing, events management, technology…
What’s the Buzz? — Why Beaver Ate Owl (and other stories).
In my last article I explored the question: “What is psychological safety?” as it not only a recent buzzword being bandied about, but something that, counter-intuitively, we see far less of these days. One would think that societies, corporations, and governments would become better at bringing out the best in their people and teams, but…
A Bridge Over Troubled Waters; How Winston Churchill Can Help Us Navigate Digital Transformation
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel’s 1970 global smash hit is often considered their signature song. A calming and soothing song for deeply troubled times. By spring 1969 both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were gone – assassinated. Racial tensions were erupting across the US. The war in Vietnam was still lumbering along like some…
Some things I learned as Alan Sugar’s Apprentice…..
Back in the early 1990s, I spent almost four years working in Sales & Channel Management for Alan Sugar’s company Amstrad plc. It was only my second commercial role. I joined Amstrad at the age of 24 years old, having gotten through a round of interviews with Group Managing Director Malcolm Miller, Sales Director Mark…
Why established companies find it so hard to innovate…
Technological innovations broadly fall into two categories: Sustaining technologies are incremental innovations that enable or sustain an existing product. Whereas Disruptive technologies are innovations that help create new markets and value networks, and eventually disrupt existing markets and value networks (over a few years or decades), displacing earlier technologies. History shows many examples of established,…
Sales / Marketing Alignment – Achieve 32% Sales Growth
As the uncertainty of Brexit looms, having a fully aligned Sales/Marketing team is even more crucial than ever before, especially for B2B based businesses, where the B2B buyer journey has become far more sophisticated Today, there is an average of 5.4 stakeholders involved in any given B2B sales process. Having a fully aligned sales/marketing operation…
The One Essential Skill for a Solution Architect
People who excel in any profession have the ability to see things from the point of view of those that they work with. It’s not just a tug-of-war where you are pulling against others to get your bit done (or your team’s bit done). That’s avoiding the bigger picture, and ultimately, the purpose of your…
What’s the Buzz? What’s “Psychological Safety”?
One of the most recent phrases making headlines around the online forums is “psychological safety”. It’s also something that has come up many times in various conversations I’ve had with Hive members. It’s worth taking a look at, especially if you’ve been asking yourself: ” How can I be a role model for psychological safety…
5G mobile – so what’s that all about?
The all-IP 4G LTE network has delivered mass smartphone adoption and fundamentally changed the ways that people communicate. There’s a lot more to come from 4G too, ahead of 5G service launches in the late 2019 – 2022 timeframe. So, what more will the fifth-generation of mobile communications offer? Users are likely to enjoy even…
