My Expectations of Leaders

view from the window at Civil Service Live 2016

Last week I ran an induction/introduction session for my new senior leadership team where I set out my expectations from them as leaders. I made some notes on the train up to the meeting, partly as a rehearsal and partly Continue reading My Expectations of Leaders

Failure is the Foundation for Success

Our culture fears failure more than anything else. We talk about failure less than we talk about death, even though failure is way more common than fatality. If we are honest we know that there are many things we do Continue reading Failure is the Foundation for Success

The Secret of Success or Snake Oil?

The Secret of Success is often snake oil

The Secret of Success is offered on many pages across the Internet.  They’re almost all snake oil salesmen trying to part you from your money with the temptation of an easy win. The real secret of success is nothing of Continue reading The Secret of Success or Snake Oil?

Chaos Monkeys

I spent a chunk of Friday in an alpha training session on clouds. Much of it wasn’t new, but there were some insights into designing stuff for clouds as opposed to fixed infrastructure. The netflix chaos monkeys came up, and Continue reading Chaos Monkeys

FiReControl’s Failure

The Public Accounts Committee have opined that the FiReControl project wasted £469 million pounds. A sobering report, all the more so if you were one of the people that worked on the project. How could things go so expensively wrong?  Continue reading FiReControl’s Failure