Manage Without Them

Thinking about “capabilities”

admin — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 07:06:42 +0000

I think we need to think about capabilities more. Not just use the word but really think it through.

Eg. From here

Wastes of intellectual energy and / or time #23345

admin — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 01:42:07 +0000

trying to come up with “business justification” for technology decisions
arguing about whether something is a “real data warehouse”
discussing the difference between an “issue” and a “risk” rather than working through the issue and risk register
saying “I’m not a technical person” when you really want to say “I’m too important for this discussion”
saying “you’re not seeing the big picture” when there clearly isn’t one

12 years later

admin — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:33:40 +0000

Twelve years is a long time. But I found this on my laptop last night – although it’s 12 years old it’s still a pretty good representation of how I think about what I do.

Governance is politics in the same room

admin — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:19:00 +0000

Sometimes it’s not really much more complicated than this:

Governance is politics in the same room

If you find yourself whispering in the corner “it’s so political around here” you should all get in the same room.

The customer isn’t at the centre of everything you do!

admin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:50:27 +0000

Just clearing out some old presentations:

Update: moved from iWork link to Slideshare (because iWork is being turned off for some reason)

Customer not the centre of everything you do

View more presentations from matthewdegeorge

Matthew has invited you to view a document they’ve shared on iWork.com. To see it, click View Document.

Customer centre

iCloud and the death of document-centric computing

admin — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:59:13 +0000

It’s disturbs me a little that everything in the Apple ecosystem, from App Stores, to App icons on iPhone home screens and on Launcher for Mac, to application specific file systems, is stepping backwards from a document centric view of computing back to an application centric view. The iCloud experience appears to confirm this direction. I’m not sure what I think about this.

iCloud isn’t just an Apple branded Dropbox. The difference between iCloud and Dropbox based sync is application versus document-centricity. Earlier in the history of computing there was a push away from application based computing, where the focus was on which application you were using to the idea of using multiple micro applications to edit documents. Microsoft’s object linking and embedded was an example of this. The old Microsoft Binder was in a way also a step towards this idea. Most explicitly, the Apple lead consortium developing the OpenDoc initiate had this idea at its core.

All of these products are now dead. More recently the dream of document-centric computing itself has died. Perhaps to be replaced by synchronisation and mobility.

The difference between Dropbox and iCloud synchronization is that Dropbox is theoretically just a file system. Multiple applications could easily edit the same files – as long as they pointed to the same file in Dropbox. This was also true across platforms. If you have a document that you edit on your iPad and sync with Dropbox you can edit that same file, using a different application, on your PC.

The iCloud experience is completely different. The only way to edit a document across platforms or devices is to use a version of the application for each device. Not a compatible application. Not a micro application that uses the same file format. But the equivalent application from the same vendor. Usually this additional application is purchased at an additional cost.

This is the most interesting part of the iOS5 experience. Not because it’s any easier than Dropbox based synchronization but because it may actually make me change the desktop application that I use purely based on iCloud support. It may also make me buy one application purely for synchronisation while I might use another for specific editing on a particular platform (after manually “syncing” on the platform).

Nice graphic, and sentiment

admin — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 08:22:03 +0000

http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2009/09/14/what-you-can-do-a-framework-for-personal-action-version-0-9/

Corporations – thought of the day

admin — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 07:33:46 +0000

I think it’s time I made clear something I’ve honestly believed for a long time.

I think capitalism is a really good system. I think “freedom” is the only moral political system. I think the Austrian Economists at www.Mises.org are right.

But I think capitalism and corporatism are different.

As one of my favorite intellectuals I’ve never met (Peter Klein) would probably agree, it’s all about entrepreneurship.

I think the anti-capitalism interpretations of Naomi Klein’s work, and the anti-capitalist interpretations of the whole “occupy Wall Street” movement, are flawed.

And finally – and this is the point of this post – I believe that all corporations exist for only four reasons:

1. To provide a mechanism for fascinating and productive individuals who are too scared to start their own business to be “successful”

2. To provide a mechanism for economically, socially, or future-trendy savvy people to be successful through investment and non-participatory involvement

3. To allow people like me, who are fascinated by the way organisations work, to make them better. Just for our own personal satisfaction.

4. To either make individuals happier by the products and services they provide – or to fail

This is what I believe. It’s also why I think Alan Joyce is cool.

What a difference a decade makes

admin — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 08:52:02 +0000

Vision, original or second hand, is obvious in retrospect…

Happy birthday iPod.

What a difference a decade makes:

”It’s a nice feature for Macintosh users,” said P. J. McNealy, a senior analyst for Gartner G2, an e-commerce research group. ”But to the rest of the Windows world, it doesn’t make any difference.”

Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, disputed the concern that the market was limited, and said the company might have trouble meeting holiday demand. He predicted that the improvement in technology he said the iPod represented would inspire consumers to buy Macintosh computers so they could use an iPod.

(Via Mises Economics Blog)

Thought of the day: Information management is management

admin — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 07:14:57 +0000

This thought has kept occurring over the last few years:

“Information management is management”

This is true in a number of ways:

traditional styles of management maintain their power by withholding information
market-based management increases transparency through information
there is now to much information – and managing it sometimes feels like the whole deal
market-based management ensures integration of feedback – usually in the form of information
market-based management ensures the manipulation of the right information has appropriate impact on the performance of the organisation (i.e. manage the information and you manage the organisation)
The Hayek “The Use of Knowledge in Society” sense