Tag Archive: thoughts

Humour – A great Leadership Tool.

Posted Sep.19, 2011 under Business, Management

Team LaughingHumour – A Great Leadership Tool

When leading a project or programme I believe that one of the most valuable tools that the leader has is humour.

Humour can be used to foster team spirit, to relieve tension and for motivation. A lot of people can take themselves very seriously and this can have a detrimental effect on the team.

I am not saying don’t take what you are doing seriously, you should, but don’t take yourself too seriously.

Humour – The Carry On Moment

If you are at a particularly stressful stage in the life-cycle injecting what I can a “Carry-On Moment” can remove the stress and reinvigorate the team.

Meetings can be particularly tedious and an injection of humour can raise the spirits and refocus the participants.

It’s amazing how, in this connected and global world, humour crosses borders and cultures and has the same affect wherever you are. But be careful that you don’t make assumptions that things that are non-offensive where you come from are OK everywhere.

Humour – Careful How You Use It.

However you need to use the tool carefully. Don’t use it to belittle others or belittle the task at hand. Don’t use it to undermine others or other teams. Always use it in a positive and appropriate manner. Use it in an appropriate and none offensive manner.

In conclusion injecting a bit of humour can really brighten an endeavor and put a spring in people’s steps.

If you need a starter here is a joke that may help that was voted the best joke at the 2011 Edinburgh festival.

“I was asked for an eight character password so I gave snow white and the seven dwarfs”

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UK Government Over Paid for IT – There’s a Surprise

Posted Jul.30, 2011 under Comment

So MP’s have finally realised that the government is paying too much for their IT and that they are beholding to a few major contract players. Well how long has it taken them to realise this then!

Most people within the IT profession have known for years that the main players had the whole of the government sector stitched up and were milking it to the nth degree. In fact many believe that the reason that IR35 was introduced was to stitch it up even further.

Its really good news to hear that there are plans now to open up the sector to smaller players and helpfully this should man that there will be a better bang for the buck going forward.

The unfortunate side of this is that a lot of the money has already been spent and it may be a bit late to try and give something back to the tax payer.

Do you think there is an opportunity for small independent consultants to get together and form Consortia in order to bid for some of this work? There are certainly the people with the right skills and motivation out there in the market – What are you thoughts?

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2011 is here what does the future hold?

Posted Feb.15, 2011 under The Future

2010 Ends and a New Year Begins

Now that 2010 has ended and 2011 arrives we need to consider what will be the major advances and changes in the coming year and the future. There used to be a distinct split between the consumer and corporate advances but that is becoming more blurred now and many consumer tech advances are crossing over very quickly.

2010 – Keep Taking the Tablets

In 2010 several technologies became the darlings of the industry. The tablet computer came back in to view with the launch of the iPad. Nearly 4 million were sold since the launch and all of the major vendors are now looking at bringing their versions to market.

2010 – The Year of the “Cloud”

With the rise of the ipad and the ongoing popularity of Microsoft’s Windows 7 the term “Cloud Computing” came into the public vocabulary. This technology change has been on the cards for some time and many of the major suppliers have been building their massive infrastructures in order to support the on-demand model. One of the biggest players in the space, Amazon, when the Wikileaks supporting hackers tried to bring the site down and all Amazon did was turn the tap up until the hackers ran out of capacity unlike Visa and Mastercard whose sites were brought down by the attack.

2010 – The ongoing rise of the Smartphone

As well as changes is form factor and the rise of the “cloud” smartphones became more and more important in the market place and this led to the move to purchasing APPS and using them. This really has shifted the thought process and usage patterns of people and is really intriguing to see where this leads. Combining mobility with the cloud, location and very specific APPS has totally changed the game for the user.

2011 – The Continued Rise of the Cloud

This leads on to the key point of this post and that is what are the future technologies that will be the drivers for change in 2011. I feel that cloud computing will continue to grow and will somehow cross over into the corporate world. I don’t mean that companies will develop there own “clouds” as that really defeats the object of the cloud!! I mean that organisations will look at the major vendors to run and manage certain applications to see if this will work. There will be lots of challenges with this in terms of pricing and support agreements but it will be worth the investment as the advantages of a fluid infrastructure are appealing.

2011 – Corporates to Take the Tablets

The changes in form factor and the move to the tablet will be more of a challenge in the corporate world as it is difficult to see the benefit. Obviously for many years sales and marketing departments have embraced these new forms and it is in that area or in the customer facing area that the tablet will become more acceptable. Whether we will see the tablet outside these departments is difficult to asses at the moment but with the mobility aspects of the technology and the extended battery life you only need to let your mind wonder a bit and you can start seeing the benefits.

2011 – The Corporate APPS

To me one of the most interesting advances and one that I can see as a game changer is the use of apps and app stores. In the major corporates over the years investments has been massive in huge monolithic enterprise or transaction based systems that are still being used and enhanced to this day. Millions have been spent with large vendors to make these systems support the business.

However with the advent of APPS there could be an opportunity to develop small little snipits of functionality that can be plugged into the legacy systems that perform very specific activities. The trend started a while ago with the concept of Software as a Service but in reality this hasn’t really caught on as in most organisations it is a solution looking for a problem.

Most corporates have a core database and core processing functionality (back-end) that it doesn’t really matter what it looks like, however at the User Interface (UI) point is where these APPS can come into their own and improve the experience and as a result improve the productivity of the user.

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