Business technology is often unloved — email, laptops, finance systems and sales tools just don’t feel as important as building a great product. But getting business tech wrong will cost money and may even kill your business. A slice through Ridley’s Opinonated Tech Stack Why do I care about Business Tech? As a CTO, I spent many years of […]
Whether you’re a big company looking to move fast or a small startup growing your team, size really does matter. Photo by Eva Blue on Unsplash Jeff Bezos, of the Amazon, is famously (if unreliably) credited with coining the two-pizza rule. This rule states that any team should be well-fed with only two pizzas, and is intended
What’s the perfect team size? Getting it right really does make a difference. Read More »
I used to believe that strategy was a necessary component for success in business. We’ve been taught this in 50,000 books about strategy. We’ve looked to the military, been inspired by Sun Tzu, ogled the luminous foresight of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. We’ve been sold the desirability of disruptive innovation and the lustre of
Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash I’ve recently been reading Creativity, Inc, Ed Catmull’s description of the history of culture and processes at Pixar. Pixar’s journey, from a 3D rendering startup to its current place at the centre of the Disney empire has been influenced by luminaries like George Lucas and Steve Jobs, and more so
If your process doesn’t change, you’re doing it wrong Read More »
Each year, I pull together the biggest tech trends and events for the last year. Originally, this was a tribute to the amazing team that I worked with at Reed for their hard work over the year. Now, it’s tending towards an obsession. Part Mary Meeker, part Black Mirror and a sprinkle of Rude Tube,
The Google Sheet mentioned in this article is available to anyone here. If you don’t work in tech (and perhaps even if you do), you may not know that the ‘ultimate’ tech role in a company is deeply varied. The same role can even change over time in the same business, and this means that
What flavour CTO does your business need? Read More »
I was recently fortunate enough to have lunch with a new colleague and as we idly shared tapas and chatted about work, I accidentally let one of my dirty secrets slip. Some conversation topics can have a stigma attached to them, like admitting that you’re a grown adult who still plays computer games (it’s 2019,
Process makes perfect Read More »
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash This article is a fairly technical take on the organisational challenges of using employee messaging like email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, Facebook for Work etc. This article is aimed at CTOs, DPOs, People Analytics professionals and vendors, and discusses the operational and compliance challenges of corporate message analysis.
The organisational implications of using employee messaging for data science Read More »
A not entirely serious flowchart of when to hire permanent staff Building your own team is part of the thrill and promise of being an entrepreneur, but it’s often the right decision to rely on talent from outside the business. Both outsourcing and scaling your own team have risks and benefits. In a previous article,
Outsource or do it yourself — a guide to keeping work in-house (or not) Read More »
Photo by Clark Young on Unsplash One of the things that I hear repeated, and believed myself for many years, was that contractors or outsourced agencies are much more expensive than permanent employees. Whilst that can often be true, it’s not quite as simple as most people think. In the past, when I tried to understand
Mythbusting the costs of building teams and outsourcing work Read More »