Author: simon_admin (Page 1 of 3)

Reflections: 2019-06-11

11 June 2019 / simon_admin

I’ve got so much to think about and so very little headspace for anything right now.

Nonetheless, I have a bunch of things I need to get down before they slip my mind. At least one I should have copied down on the whiteboard or somewhere.

First is the most recent. In response to a tweet stream about content by @mgrocki

https://twitter.com/mgrocki/status/1138451500873801730?s=21

Here’s a dirty little secret about content. It exposes operational inefficiencies in your org. So when you seek outside council to assist in content endeavors you often uncover these inefficiencies, and rather than triage and do the real work, you scapegoat the outside council.

Their recommendations are often misidentified as brash, complicated, too much, or very disruptive. Which is all a very fancy way of saying most orgs are too lazy to do the hard work around content.

Push button, get content does not exist.

There are no 5 minute abs, investing silver bullet, or one size fits all model for content production and maintenance.

Did you build your business which a strategy or idea that was implemented overnight? Why would you think your supporting content would now follow the same path?

I agree and I disagree. To me it almost feels rather optimistic. If by operational inefficiencies, you meant dysfunctions, then that’s probably a lot closer. I feel I’ve got a rant in me on this, but I’m not going to get into this now.

Then there’s a more rounded idea (post) on content. The basics, as I’m sure I’ve argued before, are that content is a lot more than words and pictures.

The two pieces cross-over possibly in many places. Ultimately, the idea of content and the reality (I’m going to stick with intranets here) really don’t match up. We have an idea for content, which we don’t really figure out the many needs of user categories for content, audit and align the abilities of the business to produce the content, figure out the information architecture to put it in the right place(s) and make it findable, and organisationally ensure it is continually deliverable and governable. And we don’t stop internal bickering over what is done/not done.

I’m also thinking a little about my transformation of location/time/xyz inspired by The Exponent. I’m too tired to actually recall the details, but it does need something.

Lot’s more, already forgotten. At least something has been stored tonight.

Daily reflection: 2017-10-28

29 October 2017 / simon_admin

Written next day. It was a day of activity: walk, swim with kids then pizza, walk and kite flying. Then later to the cinema to see The Death of Stalin. Not a lot of time for learning activities – I spent a while listening to Security Now, and can’t think of too much that was particularly new. I feel I’m beginning to understand more about the basics of encryption, and that I could stand a better chance of bringing together components.

The Death of Stalin is a film that stands on its own. Nothing I can think of combines biting humour with the horrors of history so well, certainly as far I can recall. I wonder how this might have been done as period fiction, and the answer is it would have been long, it would have to be weighty and, in many respects, it would have to be more even more absurd. This is just one of many examples of personality and dogmatic politics that badly need lampooning, of the vile individuals attracted to power, and of the foot soldiers hoping for glory yet cast aside for the slightest of reasons – it feels timely. I find myself wondering about the audience, a lot of whom didn’t seem to enjoy the film, and some (perhaps on a repeat visit, or possibly unpleasant) laughing harder and louder than I was. I’m wondering at the killings that characterise the final part of the film and comparing them mentally with John Woo’s approach – they are more brutal and they are indiscriminate in a much nastier way but, like Woo’s filmmaking, they punctuate the scenes. In short, The Death of Stalin is a badly needed distillation of the madness of the time, but it’s also a perfectly-focussed representation of the vain, incompetent, vicious and megalomaniac politicians of days gone by and years to come.

Cover image of Not All Data Is Created Equal

Not All Data is Created Equal – Gregory Fell and Mike Barlow

19 September 2017 / simon_admin

Cover image of Not All Data Is Created Equal

A short book, almost an extract, from O’Reilly, Not All Data… is readable and useful, but expectedly scant.

I’d expected more of a book on “your data might not be what you think it is”, but this serves as a handy introduction to the risks involving data, for example:

The failure to audit and categorize data can be harmful to a company’s health. “The downside is significant,” says [Chris Moschovitis, an IT governance expert and chief executive officer at tmg-emedia]. In most companies, for example, low-value data far outnumbers mid-value and high-value data. Spending the same amount of money protecting all kinds of data, regardless of its value, can be financially crippling.

“If low-value data assets are distributed across systems, then protecting them with controls designed for higher-value assets violates the basic principle that the value of an asset must exceed the cost of the controls,” he says. “Otherwise, you’re wasting your money.”

This idea is later described as the golden rule of corporate data security, and the book introduces the C-I-A method:

It’s common for CISOs to employ the C-I-A method for managing data risk. In this instance, C-I-A stands for confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

There’s also an interesting twist on the generational divide from Monica Rogati, an independent data science advisor and an equity partner at the Data Collective:

Rogati believes we’re on the verge of a paradigm shift in which “digital natives” are superseded by “data natives.” If she’s right, organizations will have to significantly ramp up their data management skills

The final conclusion is worth pondering:

In retrospect, it seems clear that treating data as some kind of commodity is misguided and dangerous. Data isn’t oil—it’s us. It’s our lives, our behaviors, and our habits. It’s where we go, what we eat, where we live, how much money we earn, which people we like, and which people we don’t like.

We can’t treat data like oil because data is infinitely more precious. A better understanding of data starts by accepting that data, like snow, comes in a variety of forms. And for better or worse, it’s not all created equal.

Ctoolkit: Strategy and planning

10 August 2017 / simon_admin

PDCA: Plan, Do, Check, Act

A four-stage model for continuous improvement in business process management, also know as the Deming circle/cycle/wheel after W. Edwards Deming. This is associated with Lean manufacturing, and is seen as iterable and separable.

Hoshin Kanri

7-step strategic planning process characterised by ongoing communication through the business. Wikipedia: “Companies that use Hoshin Kanri often follow a Think, Plan, Implement, and Review process, which is comparable to W. Edwards Deming’s Plan Do Check Act cycle.”

Establish organisational vision
Develop breakthrough objectives
Develop annual objectives
Deploy annual objectives
Implement annual objectives
Monthly review
Annual review

Catchball

First 4 phases, include socialised discussion of objectives across the business: making them acceptable through feedback, then creating implementation and cascading through the organisation. By making this an ongoing cycle, people are familiar with their objectives, rather than awaiting (and fearing) changes.

Hoshin Planning Matrix

Ctoolkit: Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs)

25 April 2017 / simon_admin

Successful ESNs

From https://dionhinchcliffe.com/2017/03/02/what-we-know-about-making-enterprise-social-networks-successful-today/

There’s a lot to read, but Dion lists the top business cases:

HR:
- Continuous Performance Reviews, Social recruiting, People/expertise locator, new hire onboarding, social learning & development, HR knowledge base, digital line manager of the future, social talent management
Sales:
- Prospect research, lead scoring and distribution, RFP collaboration, forecasting and deal rooms, quota management, contracts and approvals, training and certification
Marketing:
- Employee advocacy, campaign management, content hub, social product catalogues, pre-sales community, digital focus groups, crowdsourced marketing,
Service
- Support Hub/KB, Support escalation/resolution, policy management, support advocacy programme, customer community, peer to peer support, customer service feedback

Ctoolkit: Learning

11 April 2017 / simon_admin

SCORM > xAPI > CMI5

cmi5: The next generation SCORM

SCORM, released in 2001 (major update 2005) covers: scheduling, assessment, competencies, delivery, course management, learning records, sequencing, user management, reports, compliance, requirements tracking, curricula, certification, search and preferences.

xAPI is a data transport and storage mechanism. It is simpler and doesn’t account for the features in SCORM

CMI5 “You can think of cmi5 as the LMS “use case” for xAPI. cmi5 defines how the LMS and the content will communicate using the xAPI Learning Record Store (LRS)”

Measuring Learning

Kirkpatrick Scale

Named after Donald Kirkpatrick (Professor, University of Wisconsin) who proposed this scale for measuring the effects of learning:

Reaction
How do the learners respond to the lesson/course/etc.?
Learning
Measuring what is actually learned by the attendees
Behaviour
How does behaviour change as a result of the training?
Results
How does this affect the bottom line, or other metrics?

My first reaction is to be underwhelmed by this. Aside from becoming progressively harder to measure, it is largely subjective. That said, these are good axes to be measuring along, and should definitely be lenses through which one can review a model.

Ctoolkit: Office 365

11 April 2017 / simon_admin

Collected notes on Office 365

Microsoft Teams

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/slack-v-ms-teams-rodney-guzman

Key points:

Slack beats MS Teams “hands down” for working with external teams
Suits a team-based collaboration model
Risk of deleting a Team permanently
Many connectors already available
Multiple conversations can exist in a single channel
Integration with OneNote > “team wiki”
Easy to create meetings

(Via https://medium.com/@AGilleran/confused-about-microsoft-teams-office-365-groups-yammer-and-more-aa20dc46233c)

Review: Postcards from the Edge – Carrie Fisher

8 April 2017 / simon_admin

This is one book I’d rather not be reading, but the death of Carrie Fisher is what drove me to buying this (and Wishful Drinking) – a greater loss drives a much smaller gain.

But it remains an emphatic gain. As a tour guide into the heads of drugged-up Hollywood types, Fisher brings insight and humour, and a sense of having lived in it. She writes extremely well and, even in the crazy opening chapters it’s hard not to keep reading. That opening, however, is what bothers me most about the book: I either wish it weren’t there, or that it kept going throughout, especially since the end doesn’t quite live up to the start. Yes, it is blunt yet sharp, funny but not satirical (close at times, perhaps an alternate-reality Hollywood), and personal and insightful, but in the next-day’s cold light not quite anything.

I know that sounds like I’m changing my mind as I write, but it’s not how I feel. I’d have been happier with a few more postcards, or fewer postcards and more edge. As it stands I feel like I’ve been on that tour, just I haven’t been changed by it.

CToolkit: Intranets in context