Blog

Strategy, Architecture & Problem-Solving

Humber Bridge at night

Splitting in two

I’m going to start splitting this site into two 1. Strategic/Enterprise Architecture consultancy That’s been my career across a number of clients and industry sectors, including writing one book and several others in formation. 2. Photography I’m investing more of my time and effort in photography, fitting sessions around consultancy clients. You can see my…
Read more

Tanker

Sunk cost

During the last few weeks of writing my last book, I realised that a related message to a different audience would be better delivered by video. So I started writing a training video. Then I stopped. I’d thought more about what I wanted to complete, who the customers would be and focussed on that. The…
Read more

DunningKrugerFlow

The Flow of Dunning Kruger – a Blend of Challenge, Skill and Perception

I’ve discussed Dunning Kruger syndrome a number of times, loving the phrase “Peak of Mount Stupid” which we’ve all been on at some point. Flow A few months ago, I was introduced to Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, described succinctly by Chris Bailey. Borrowing Chris’ interpretation of a core chart from the book, we can see…
Read more

Pugh Matrix Template

Pugh Matrix Template

In Running With Knickers on Your Head book, I introduced the Pugh Matrix to assist with deciding on which solution to proceed with. You need either the excel or the pdf (the pdf is just an export of the Excel sheets). Excel: Pugh Matrix PDF: Pugh Matrix Intro PDF: Pugh Matrix

Gemba WasteWalk

Gemba Templates

The two Gemba templates used in the Running With Knickers On Your Head book. These are used to help identify waste in your organisation. They’re not the only tool, but they’re a good tool to start with. The Excel download includes the two pdfs. Excel download 1: Gemba Pdf download 1: Stand in the Circle…
Read more

Stealth Plane

Stealth Mode is a Novice’s Game

Yet again, I’ve come across another post by a would-be/current founder who’s asking for advice. They’ve framed the question in an abstract way, dancing around the subject, trying to get the advice that they want but without providing sufficient information about their idea for the community to be able to add any significant value.  It’s…
Read more

Electric car

Range Anxiety: Customer Issue or Product Issue?

I mentioned in a previous short article about how companies can misinterpret what their clients want and in another about industry reactions to issues. In this article, I want to explore how companies can force their issues onto the customers. Background I was reading up on electric cars (EVs) and in the last year the…
Read more

headphones

False Features

Are the features you provide in your products the features that your customers want or those you think they want? Variants on that question are common. But all too often, a feature slips through and you have to wonder how it got there, how was it approved, why did the company spend time and effort…
Read more

Port

Customer vs Enterprise Perspective

Here’s a quick exercise on perspective, scope and how we view problems.  How big is your enterprise? Follow that question with these two questions: How big is it compared to the size of your organisation? How big is it compared to the size of your team? That’s the internal focus.  Now let’s try a different…
Read more

grave

The Truth Behind Reducing Death Rates

I was being interviewed by a prospective client a few years ago and I was asked an odd variant of a common question. There are more typical versions of that question, e.g. “what accomplishments are you most proud of?”. This variant blended the 3rd person perspective with reputation and achievement. If was more along the…
Read more