Next Tuesday I will be starting a year long project based around a number of TED presentations, some of which were included in my previous post.
I have started a new blog to capture the A Year of TED project, which explains the entire project and will be a place for me to explore what I am learning from the inspirational TED speakers.
It means that I will probably slow down even further on this blog, but then again some of the talks are work related, so there may be some outcomes that end up in this blog - we'll see how it goes.
October 25, 2011
September 11, 2011
Things to inspire (from TED)
I'm a stumbler, that means I have a StumbleUpon account and waste hours of my life looking at websites I would never otherwise have found. Fortunately I don't have children, so I have time to partake in this activity :-)
There have been some amazing sites and pieces of information that I have come across while stumbling that have opened up my world to things I might never have known about. One of the most inspiring serendipitous stumbles I had occurred a couple of years ago, when I discovered Randy Pausch's final lecture and with it the wonders of TED.
Before I start on TED, I would recommend that everyone watches Randy's final lecture. If you can get through the tears at the beginning and the end (I watched it on a train, not a good idea) this is an inspiring presentation that made me want to be a better person (don't think I've managed too much of that at this stage).
But moving on from Randy, since subscribing to TED through my iTunes I have encountered some equalling inspiring and really interesting presentations on knowledge, design, technology and the human body. So my all time favourite TED presentations, the ones that I have carried with me and thought about incorporating into my life are:
Barry Schwartz on our loss of wisdom - moral will and moral skill, something really important to be aware of.
Rory Sutherland: Sweat the small stuff - the art of design and how we make things too complicated.
Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success - which is a fascinating insight into what might actually be making us all anxious and miserable.
Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity - which just makes sense and I think anyone with creative talent needs to watch.
Don Norman on 3 ways good design makes you happy - love the enthusiasm
David Logan on tribal leadership - I found this one to be so interesting that I have since purchased his book, with Steve Zaffron called The three laws of performance. This is an amazing book that makes a lot of sense but helps you look at leadership and performance in a very different way - I highly recommend it.
David Cameron: The next age of government - for a government worker, and an information manager, this is very interesting
Tom Wujec: Build a tower, build a team - I would love to try this with our current organisation
Any presentation by Ze Frank - but I love his website as well http://www.zefrank.com/
Aimee Mullins Opportunity of adversity - another inspirational one
Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight - this one is great for the human body stuff
Being a person that works with data these are spectacular:
David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization
Jonathan Harris collects stories
Jonathan Harris: the Web's secret stories
The thing is that there are easily another 40 presentations that I could link to here. As a matter of fact I started writing this post months ago and the reason I haven't posted it was I didn't feel I had included all of the presentations I thought were brilliant, let alone the ones that are just intriguing or interesting. Then as I worked on it more and more presentations were added.
Today I just decided to post it and let you guys trawl through them all for yourselves. There is an amazing presentation from a journalist who became homeless for a year, brilliant presentations on all aspects of design, amazingly inspiring presentations from people who have overcome so much.
But enough of my raving, if you have not yet entered the world of TED.com go and have a look, there is bound to be something or someone that will inspire, challenge and teach you something.
There have been some amazing sites and pieces of information that I have come across while stumbling that have opened up my world to things I might never have known about. One of the most inspiring serendipitous stumbles I had occurred a couple of years ago, when I discovered Randy Pausch's final lecture and with it the wonders of TED.
Before I start on TED, I would recommend that everyone watches Randy's final lecture. If you can get through the tears at the beginning and the end (I watched it on a train, not a good idea) this is an inspiring presentation that made me want to be a better person (don't think I've managed too much of that at this stage).
But moving on from Randy, since subscribing to TED through my iTunes I have encountered some equalling inspiring and really interesting presentations on knowledge, design, technology and the human body. So my all time favourite TED presentations, the ones that I have carried with me and thought about incorporating into my life are:
Barry Schwartz on our loss of wisdom - moral will and moral skill, something really important to be aware of.
Rory Sutherland: Sweat the small stuff - the art of design and how we make things too complicated.
Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success - which is a fascinating insight into what might actually be making us all anxious and miserable.
Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity - which just makes sense and I think anyone with creative talent needs to watch.
Don Norman on 3 ways good design makes you happy - love the enthusiasm
David Logan on tribal leadership - I found this one to be so interesting that I have since purchased his book, with Steve Zaffron called The three laws of performance. This is an amazing book that makes a lot of sense but helps you look at leadership and performance in a very different way - I highly recommend it.
David Cameron: The next age of government - for a government worker, and an information manager, this is very interesting
Tom Wujec: Build a tower, build a team - I would love to try this with our current organisation
Any presentation by Ze Frank - but I love his website as well http://www.zefrank.com/
Aimee Mullins Opportunity of adversity - another inspirational one
Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight - this one is great for the human body stuff
Being a person that works with data these are spectacular:
David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization
Jonathan Harris collects stories
Jonathan Harris: the Web's secret stories
The thing is that there are easily another 40 presentations that I could link to here. As a matter of fact I started writing this post months ago and the reason I haven't posted it was I didn't feel I had included all of the presentations I thought were brilliant, let alone the ones that are just intriguing or interesting. Then as I worked on it more and more presentations were added.
Today I just decided to post it and let you guys trawl through them all for yourselves. There is an amazing presentation from a journalist who became homeless for a year, brilliant presentations on all aspects of design, amazingly inspiring presentations from people who have overcome so much.
But enough of my raving, if you have not yet entered the world of TED.com go and have a look, there is bound to be something or someone that will inspire, challenge and teach you something.
April 18, 2011
eDiscovery Conference and Presentation
Last week was the eDiscovery conference in Melbourne that I was asked to present at. I did decide to use Prezi for the presentation, which I think was really the best choice as the presentation really lent itself to this format. The presentation is available at prezi.com.
The talk itself went down fairly well, as well as I guess I could expect in a room that was mainly legal people and vendors. This was the problem, in my opinion, the conference was a very intriguing mix and I really don't know that the Information Managers who were asked to speak were really given a good enough brief about the focus of the other people in the room to make our presentations meaningful to everyone.
For me, I really enjoyed the IM briefs and quite a few of the eDiscovery process ones as well, there were issues I had never really considered that helped solidify for me that the focus of the work I am doing will be very helpful for the business in the long run.
Maybe I am misjudging the level of interest from the legal people, maybe they really did get something out of our presentations as well - guess I have to wait for the feedback to really find out - it just felt like there was a bit of a disconnect between what each side of the room might have been trying to get out of it.
I know that the focus of the conference was to bring IM, IT and Legal together, and Warren tried very hard to do this in his chairing role - it just seemed to lack some unity for me. And that is not saying that I didn't think it was worthwhile or interesting, I really got a lot out of it, just not quite cohesive.
The talk itself went down fairly well, as well as I guess I could expect in a room that was mainly legal people and vendors. This was the problem, in my opinion, the conference was a very intriguing mix and I really don't know that the Information Managers who were asked to speak were really given a good enough brief about the focus of the other people in the room to make our presentations meaningful to everyone.
For me, I really enjoyed the IM briefs and quite a few of the eDiscovery process ones as well, there were issues I had never really considered that helped solidify for me that the focus of the work I am doing will be very helpful for the business in the long run.
Maybe I am misjudging the level of interest from the legal people, maybe they really did get something out of our presentations as well - guess I have to wait for the feedback to really find out - it just felt like there was a bit of a disconnect between what each side of the room might have been trying to get out of it.
I know that the focus of the conference was to bring IM, IT and Legal together, and Warren tried very hard to do this in his chairing role - it just seemed to lack some unity for me. And that is not saying that I didn't think it was worthwhile or interesting, I really got a lot out of it, just not quite cohesive.
March 31, 2011
Sometimes it is just your job to listen
I feel like I have become a bit of a therapist in the last couple of weeks, as I have started conducting the needs gathering workshops within the organisation.
The way that I have approached this is that I have provided them with a template to capture the information they need to do their jobs; the information they create as part of their jobs; the IT/manual systems they get information from and put information into; the people they rely on for information and the people they communicate information to; and finally the limitations that they experience in all of these areas.
Many of them haven’t done the pre-work, but it is a good template to commence the conversations around.
On the whole the majority of the comments are not unexpected, the revolve around communications, standardising procedures, better access to the information they require, sorting out the shared drive, having compliant and accessible systems and so on.
So why do I say I feel like a therapist? Well there are a lot of these areas that have obviously not had someone sit down with them and give them the ability to explain where corporate systems are not supporting them properly, or where they struggle to find the information they need, or anything along these lines really.
So I’m getting everything relating to processes, organisational structures that don’t work, corporate policies relating to vehicles and any number of other frustrations coming through in the discussions.
But don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying the process and some of the conversations have allowed me to fill some gaps in my corporate knowledge in the process. And, above all else, I think that it is important that staff are given the chance to get these frustrations off their chest. Does it mean I will be able to do anything to influence changes to many of these issues? Of course not, but as the title says sometimes it is just your job to listen.
And for the things that I can influence? They will go into the Needs Matrix for inclusion in the Information Management Strategic Plan.
The way that I have approached this is that I have provided them with a template to capture the information they need to do their jobs; the information they create as part of their jobs; the IT/manual systems they get information from and put information into; the people they rely on for information and the people they communicate information to; and finally the limitations that they experience in all of these areas.
Many of them haven’t done the pre-work, but it is a good template to commence the conversations around.
On the whole the majority of the comments are not unexpected, the revolve around communications, standardising procedures, better access to the information they require, sorting out the shared drive, having compliant and accessible systems and so on.
So why do I say I feel like a therapist? Well there are a lot of these areas that have obviously not had someone sit down with them and give them the ability to explain where corporate systems are not supporting them properly, or where they struggle to find the information they need, or anything along these lines really.
So I’m getting everything relating to processes, organisational structures that don’t work, corporate policies relating to vehicles and any number of other frustrations coming through in the discussions.
But don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying the process and some of the conversations have allowed me to fill some gaps in my corporate knowledge in the process. And, above all else, I think that it is important that staff are given the chance to get these frustrations off their chest. Does it mean I will be able to do anything to influence changes to many of these issues? Of course not, but as the title says sometimes it is just your job to listen.
And for the things that I can influence? They will go into the Needs Matrix for inclusion in the Information Management Strategic Plan.
February 3, 2011
The Project Team - Project Series
I know that I have moved away from this series for a little while, but there are certainly still a few areas that I want to examine, comment on, whatever it is I'm doing here.
The next one is the structure of the Project Team, and more particularly, the business representative(s) on the project team.
Unfortunately projects involving IT can take a while to get in place, and organisations are not usually staffed to be able to lose valuable operational staff to a project for a long period of time. This brings another tension into projects that have IT components, since the business is reticent to lose skilled staff for long periods, so they will pressure the project team to deliver earlier, or make their staff member(s) available 'as required', or in the absolute worst case give the project team a staff member they are willing to part with for a long period.
Rule #1 for the business unit should be when choosing the business expert to give to the project team it should be a person that you really can't do without. Or put another way, if you are happy to let a person go to the project they are the wrong person for the project.
This is not rocket science. The role of the business expert in the project team is to inform the project and development staff about the business processes, and make decision about the product that the business will have to live with. So think about it, surely you don't want to give them a staff member who is less than effective in their role? You want to give them the person who understands everything, you want to give them the person that everyone else relies upon for support and assistance, you want to give them the person who you trust to train new staff in the business processes. It stands to reason that this would be the case.
However, as mentioned earlier you can't afford to lose this person for a long period of time, so what does the business do? This is where a lot of projects fall down. We had a project in Defence that was developing a system to support a particular business process. A position was chosen as the liaison point, which was not the best position but the business couldn't spare the people who actually did the job. The person in that position had their own thoughts about how things 'should' work in the space, and had the system designed to support their view of the world. Needless to say that there was a significant redesign task when other people finally saw the system.
The thing that I have learned is that you cannot rely on one person to inform the project of how the business works, and most projects seem to understand this. There should be a business person on the project team, someone to keep the IT people on the straight and narrow when they get too focused on the technical aspects and lose sight of what the system is being designed for (it happens). The business person is also an important role to assist with the communications and training development. But it is even more important to ensure that the project team has a stakeholder group with your best staff, and that they are engaged appropriately in the process of developing the system.
There should be a Goldilocks approach to this consultation - not too little, not too much, just enough. The stakeholder group should not be asked to validate everything the project business member says, but they should be asked to validate processes early on, they should be shown the developing system at key times in the process and of course they need to be part of the test and trial process before full UAT is commenced.
A note for Project Managers and BAs - when you are developing the business case and doing process mapping ask the question 'who do you go to for help?' and ensure that the 1 or 2 people that the majority of staff mention are requested to be part of the project. Put the business on the spot to say that they won't give these people up and identify the risks involved. In my experience the business seldom thinks of the actual impact of giving you less than optimal staff.
The next one is the structure of the Project Team, and more particularly, the business representative(s) on the project team.
Unfortunately projects involving IT can take a while to get in place, and organisations are not usually staffed to be able to lose valuable operational staff to a project for a long period of time. This brings another tension into projects that have IT components, since the business is reticent to lose skilled staff for long periods, so they will pressure the project team to deliver earlier, or make their staff member(s) available 'as required', or in the absolute worst case give the project team a staff member they are willing to part with for a long period.
Rule #1 for the business unit should be when choosing the business expert to give to the project team it should be a person that you really can't do without. Or put another way, if you are happy to let a person go to the project they are the wrong person for the project.
This is not rocket science. The role of the business expert in the project team is to inform the project and development staff about the business processes, and make decision about the product that the business will have to live with. So think about it, surely you don't want to give them a staff member who is less than effective in their role? You want to give them the person who understands everything, you want to give them the person that everyone else relies upon for support and assistance, you want to give them the person who you trust to train new staff in the business processes. It stands to reason that this would be the case.
However, as mentioned earlier you can't afford to lose this person for a long period of time, so what does the business do? This is where a lot of projects fall down. We had a project in Defence that was developing a system to support a particular business process. A position was chosen as the liaison point, which was not the best position but the business couldn't spare the people who actually did the job. The person in that position had their own thoughts about how things 'should' work in the space, and had the system designed to support their view of the world. Needless to say that there was a significant redesign task when other people finally saw the system.
The thing that I have learned is that you cannot rely on one person to inform the project of how the business works, and most projects seem to understand this. There should be a business person on the project team, someone to keep the IT people on the straight and narrow when they get too focused on the technical aspects and lose sight of what the system is being designed for (it happens). The business person is also an important role to assist with the communications and training development. But it is even more important to ensure that the project team has a stakeholder group with your best staff, and that they are engaged appropriately in the process of developing the system.
There should be a Goldilocks approach to this consultation - not too little, not too much, just enough. The stakeholder group should not be asked to validate everything the project business member says, but they should be asked to validate processes early on, they should be shown the developing system at key times in the process and of course they need to be part of the test and trial process before full UAT is commenced.
A note for Project Managers and BAs - when you are developing the business case and doing process mapping ask the question 'who do you go to for help?' and ensure that the 1 or 2 people that the majority of staff mention are requested to be part of the project. Put the business on the spot to say that they won't give these people up and identify the risks involved. In my experience the business seldom thinks of the actual impact of giving you less than optimal staff.
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