Month: June 2017

Strategy, Architecture & Problem-Solving

Ladder of citizen participation

Where Organisations Go Wrong

A lot happened in 1969. The moon landing, Led Zeppelin was released (the first LZ album), the maiden flight of the Boeing 747, and a paper by Sherry Arnstein. It’s difficult to say which is the most important of those above, but Arnstein’s paper is probably the least famous. Context I frequently speak with directors…
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Shhh!

Is this a bad time to talk?

There are times to make people feel comfortable, to help them feel that the change is achievable. There are also times when we need to remove that comfort and destabilise temporarily, so that they can work towards a solution. We commonly reintroduce comfort, or better still guide the audience towards discovering the own new level…
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Considerations for the platform of a new startup

Background I’m seriously considering building my new startup on Microsoft’s Azure platform with the BizSpark programme and that’s a departure for me. I’m going to use the term “startup” loosely but at least 1 of the 3 conformed to Steve Blank’s definition, proving the business model worked. I’ll cover three of the ideas; 2 built…
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Automation of White Collar Jobs and Process Debt

Background Business Insider published an article on how automation may remove the need for people in white-collar roles. While the context of the article seems relevant, I found the choice of example to be very odd. Specifically Deliveroo’s creation of 25 redundancies in their ordering process. In fact, I think it more likely that process debt had…
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Applying Different Categories of Knowledge

Introduction We should be careful when we judge the effectiveness of others and reflecting on this can in turn help influence us in how we approach change activities. I’ll use this chart (shown in more detail further down) to describe the differences. First Day Effectiveness On numerous occasions, I’ve seen people judge others by their effectiveness on the first day at…
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