There is a common ‘wisdom’ these days that projects and businesses should move faster. From agile to continuous delivery and DevOps, everything is about the need for speed. But many people struggle to understand the benefits of ‘faster’. Or fail to see how it can be achieved. At a…

I recently devoured “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman. It describes two systems of thought that drive our behaviour — the impetuous, intuitive System 1 and the rational and lazy System 2. As a very short and wholly inadequate précis of Kahneman’s work: the book demonstrates that while we…

One problem I often encounter in business (startup or otherwise) is a lack of clarity, a lack of direction. As I detailed in an earlier post linking your strategic goals to your day to day activities is essential to stay on track, to stay focussed and ultimately to deliver. And while people are often able to construct a set of high level goals and link low level tasks to…

I often turn to military metaphors when I’m trying to explain management concepts like strategy. The reason is simple, the military have been doing this a lot longer than most industries and they operate in a far more chaotic, critical and life threatening environment than most enterprises. Most management translations…

I’ve noticed an alarming trend — management by guilt. I’m sure it’s been around for a long time and I haven’t noticed it. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve even practised it on occasion. But it is alarming because it is dishonest and damaging. The most significant manifestation for me…

This story is an experiment. It started life as an academic assignment on governance for cultural heritage. Never wanting to waste good writing, I decided to turn it into a blog post. It was also an experiment in using Large Language Models (LLM). …

This article is one of a series — on housing and urban design. While I’ve worked in the virtual world for most of my career, I’m also interested in the physical world and how we can make it better to live in. …

Ten years ago I built a house… I designed a house and a builder…. I designed a house and a bunch of loosely coordinated subcontractors built it. Since then I have spent a lot of time fixing things. Most recently I’ve been fixing my downpipes and gutters as winter in…

This is one of my series of short stories. I wrote this one as an entry in a competition which I sadly did not win. As I recall I was reading a lot of John Le Carré novels at the time. …