Monday 16 March 2015

Short Blogging Break

Three week for Software Exams




My next blog is scheduled for public on Monday April 6th of April, 2015. I shall send out ad hoc updates in the interim and thank you for taking the time to read them and my blog over the last 9 months. Stay tuned folks, this is only the beginning of the journey… more exciting stuff to follow!!... 

Monday 9 March 2015

Interests V Positions… Barriers to sustainable Innovation…

Where interests and positions collide...



In a sustainable world, we would always aspire to look after our ‘best interests’ whilst taking into account the interests of our wider community in our decisions and actions. In the real world, it’s perfectly acceptable to look after our ‘best interests’ and if convenient, incorporate the interests of our wider community into our outcomes. Whilst there is nothing wrong in essence with the latter, I submit we need to question whether or not we are looking after our ‘best interests’ or simply protecting our favoured position when engaged in decision making, which impacts others.

Why the need? Its my view that we will never get better if we don’t accept the shortcomings of our past decisions, no matter how good the outcome was. In honest self-reflection and/or group reflection, we allow ourselves an individual and/or group chance at a ‘do-over’ where we can try again but be better when we did before. After all, if we blindly accept the status quo and lock into a position, we can never get better at best and probably will get worse over time. However, if we learn from our past and understand clearly what we did wrong as much as what we did right, then our future vision will be informed towards formulating better ways to reach our goals.  So, with all that learning and improvement, taking our wider community into account in our decision-making becomes a transformational possibility!

"Positions V Interests" 


One of the biggest inhibitors to better solutions and more sustainable outcomes is when we become entrenched in an ‘unmoveable’ position. The more we entrench our position, the less flexible we become and the less flexible we become, the more detached we are from our interests.

Picture this; a company employs a manager to manage a team of Developers whom have a new graduate come on board as a Developer Intern. They provide minimum supervision and the graduate excels in getting to grips with systems, projects and delivers his outputs on time making his Senior Developer and Manager happy. The Intern, quite brilliant and feeling empowered by the positive feedback decides to float an idea about Cloud technology that could disrupt current models but it needs work. He tells his Senior Developer who realises the current system could be thrown out if it succeeded and his manager privately agrees.  They both decide to dismiss the Intern’s idea reminding him of his role at the company.

Demotivated by the experience, what does the Intern do? He keeps his mouth shut and does only what is ‘expected’ of him. It’s patiently clear that when the Intern stepped outside of what was expected of him, the management response was negative rather then positive. This is where the divergence of interests and positions emerges with the Senior Developer and Manager acting nearly instinctively to ‘protect’ their respective positions, thus abandoning their interests and by extension, the interests of the company, which benefits from an actionable idea that could disrupt their own industry to their advantage. If they both had just reconciled their interests to their positions, they would have seen the opportunities that lay in the form of the Intern’s idea.

So, improvement does not happen overnight, it’s a continuous process that nobody can afford to overlook in my view. How do we get over interests V positions in an organisational setting, thus allowing innovation to breath from any quarter and be captured by the company for at least a process of evaluation?

Change from within – Individuals need to realise at all levels the part they play in their companies success (or failure) and allow an innovation idea to breath even if goes nowhere. The acceptance of ones interests first and then reconciling them to their actual position is a must when opening up to an idea for change. Positions often change when reconciled to interests making openness to ideas at all levels a conscious choice to evaluate its possibilities and embrace the spirit in which they were presented. 

Organisational Change – Companies need to change their business practices and structures so it allows everybody to give ideas the time they need to be expressed and explored. They also need to formalise the capture mechanisms for all ideas even if it’s a bad one. Recording all innovation ideas allow them to be reviewed at a later date when elements change making a revisit of the idea worthwhile.

Cultural Change – The top two points need to be deployed into a culture making the culture more collaborative in nature and tolerant of bad ideas as they are welcoming of good ones. There is nothing that kills creativity quicker then a bad manager who aggressively and arrogantly dismisses the thoughts and ideas of a subordinate! When people freely express their ideas on work place innovation, you know you’re doing it right from a leadership and a cultural standpoint!


It’s rewarding being at the tip of an innovation curve, which sets a brighter future for the company and all within its walls. Those who realise the best source of innovation are its people will always build a culture that enables this resource to grow, where process and innovation are based on the most valuable element in situ on the platform, which of course are its people!




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Monday 2 March 2015

Software!!… It’s hot and it’s here to stay!

Our expanding digital footprints are touching the world we live in! 



Bill Gates famously said, “Be nice to nerds, chances are you will end up working for one!” There is a good chance he is right! Nevertheless, I am yet to be convinced we don’t all ultimately work for hedge fund managers and their clients, where we worry more about the next quarterly financial return then on our impact in the marketplace along with its effect on all our shareholders, our customers and our wider community!! With such tidal forces at play, it’s easy to see why learnt helplessness has eaten away at our souls and a tide of apathy gravitates us away from balance to the most powerful force in our business stratosphere. 

All that said, we are not excused from responsibility when it comes to doing the right thing and to do this, we need to once again, find our centre of balance and see the longer-term impact of our actions over a wider field of vision before we proceed.

I have being collaborating with a friend on blogging and his shared insights on his professional journey, which has gotten me thinking about my own journey and how doing the right thing leads to new roads not truly travelled before. It also brings me to my future yet to be discovered with all it’s adventure, perils and riches cast together in a scary montage of what could be! We all know the future is not cast in absolute stone, but chiseled out by the characters of those in the present that shape tomorrow with every thoughtful decision made. My own reflection on life has led to two realisations; firstly I want to be one of those chiseling characters mentioned above and secondly, I see software as a vehicle to a sustainable future for us all ergo I want to embrace it fully on my journey through life.  As software is eating the world and thus is my hungry friend, I head towards it as a career change attracted by the following traits of the software industry:

Culture, culture, culture!!! There is no substitute for a creative, engaging and collaborative giver culture where you can create and strive for excellence with those of like mind (and belief) around you. They say ‘when you surround yourself with like-minded people, you can do great things’. This realisation in software culture is very practical noting the success of a software company is not about the transaction, it’s not about the guy at the top, it’s about the people who make up company as it’s their creation and commitment, which sparks excellence from inception to market to payment for goods and services rendered.  In addition, it’s also about the continued inputs of those same people, who maintain the code and the business, keeping it current, relevant and ultimately profitable.  This recognised premise sees a culture that allows giver types to collaborate, share and grow together in a family of like minded professionals who may not always see eye to eye but conduct constructive dissent as part of the creative process keeping everybody sharp and lean in their thinking. In thinking about this, I realised, my career move is less about the destination and more about where I belong!

Excellence as a virtue. In software, the price for half doing something is greater then not doing it at all, so striving for structured excellence in what you do whilst retaining the creative spark is an excellence one can have and in software, should aspire to. Unfortunately, being technically good in other industries can lead to culture and partisan clashes, which destroys value in what a technically skilled professional can bring. Once again, it’s about knowing who we are and where we belong.



The journey is better then the destination! I can’t remember having so much fun learning at a breakneck pace or having so many technically demanding projects where I learn more then I deliver in the end result. The lesson for me lies in the wealth of understanding gained from each project I engage in and the quality of the end project is only a reflection of accumulated understanding to that point! Where else does creativity, life and technical understanding merge in such synergy to give birth to a new ‘tool’ in the world, which is forged by thought rather then steel?

Legacy lies in what you leave behind. I can’t think of a more-faster growing societal element in humanity today then software.  The fact that it can allow us to do more with less and often with better results is leaving me in no doubt that if I want to be that guy who makes a difference in this world, then software will be my vehicle in which I can leave behind a contribution to mankind’s continuing journey. 


This self-reflection has given me a sense of realisation of my generation whom like those gone before and to come, I can now say “it’s our time!” The direction both good and bad for our kind is ultimately driven by our intent, wisdom and courage we show in our decision’s today, which casts the environmental inheritance for tomorrow ‘come with what, may!’ I thus submit; with our good intent the future can only look brighter for our fellow man and with software on our side, our chances are good indeed!



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“Public Domain”