Archive for the 'Blog' Category



Incremental steps

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. – Steve Jobs

Iterative change over time builds up so much that you need to sit down and have a clean slate.

A review of where we are now, where we want to go and how we get there.  To connect the dots that got you here.

  • For leadership, this could be a new CEO, to come in and take the company forward.
  • For systems, it could be a new tool which acknowledges the past but has the platform for the future.
  • For culture, it means embracing all the little changes and bedding it down into the DNA of the company.

This is a good thing, it’s the natural progression, it’s how organizations move forward.  Otherwise they lose sight of the lessons they’ve learnt to get where they are.  Long term sustainable success is by building forward momentum, so you’re not repeating the mistakes of the past.

 

April 30th, 2014

What is good?

We’ve been playing around with Machine Learning, to help uncover patterns in content.

And there’s two significant components
1) Definition
2) How variables stack up against that definition

You can look at the elements, imagine you want to use machine learning to find out how to build a good car.

You would load up all the good cars, that within itself is a definition, what is good?

It could be design lead, which could be established through design awards, or design nominations, it could be sales, it could be publicity.

Something quantifiable.

Then you break down it down to detect all the variables that make up a good car, things like four wheels, the gradient of the curves, acceleration, weight, colour.

This helps you then understand what a good car looks like.

But good is subjective.

Just remember that, data analysis is great but it always comes back to what are we doing it for.

April 25th, 2014

An Image Centric Web

I heard the Ari of TripleLift give their pitch a while back.

Their argument is the web is becoming image centric. Just take a look at:
Pinterest
Instagram
Any publishers site

And there’s a lot of truth to that, we’ve always heard an image tells a thousand words, in a web of ever increasing content being able to convey your message quicker, consistently & concisely is important.

Images are a great way of doing that.

Something to think about, how do we get more visual in our communications, how can we say more with less, what do our images say about us?

April 23rd, 2014

The ultimate GTD trick

I’m forever finding new tools, software and shortcuts to help me work more effectively.

A few weeks back I received a notification, look at this 6 months from now, it was an internal review.  This was powered by FollowUpThen, a simple app which notifies when you need to follow up on something.

It works like this:

1) You forward or cc them in on an email

2) Put the date at the front of the email i.e. [email protected]

3) They then confirm the email and send it back to you on that date.

It’s the ultimate getting things done trick, get things off your plate which are deferred and you’ll get them back when you need them.

April 14th, 2014

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