Mike Schorah

Blame the Daleks : I've never got over the childhood scarring from knowing our sofa was just no match for their death rays! I consider myself fairly well-read, certainly with a vocabulary bigger than England's soccer manager Fabio Capello claims . But thanks to the Daleks I've never read much science fiction so, until today, I'd never heard the word 'grok.' Kim_Cameron   kim cameron   People didn't "get over it". [ http://tcrn.ch/fER72l ] DOES NOT COMPUTE yet - "creepy"  GMAIL   HAL  too far out to GROK. Just wait. Check out his  www.IdentityBlog.com It seems that ' grok ' means " to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man. " @Kim_Cameron is...

If you're a one-man-band, regardless of whether there are others in the organization or not, then mission statements are so much hot air and a waste of time. But if you're prepared to lead followers who are willing to be led then a mission statement can prove vital to get everyone on the same page with a shared understanding. I often say that project management, at any level, is at heart as simple as going to the grocery store: First, you need to know why  you're going. That's where mission statements come in. And the reason for the journey has got to outweigh both the cost of travel and the benefit of staying put. Like going to get provisions for breakfast so you won't be hungry in the morning. Second, you need to know what  you're going to do. For example, the objective is to get milk. Next, where  are you going? (Better than GPS, this is a certain shelf on a cabinet in the store...) And where are you going from? Only then can you plot the route for how...

According to a BBC news item today, security firm McAfee alerts that " Intellectual property and business secrets are fast becoming a target for cyber thieves...research found that some hackers are starting to specialise in data stolen from corporate networks. McAfee said deals were being done for trade secrets, marketing plans, R&D reports and source code. " Well, a security firm selling products to counter such threats would report the threat, wouldn't they? Whether you lean towards that cynical view or not, the reality is that many organisations find that their core value now lies in the data they store. (It's not just firms like Google that have precious few assets beyond the data that other people allow them to collect; many much smaller firms, too, have valuable data they can mine for value.) And it's often trivially easy to lose it. Last week I walked out of a building with a copy of the business's entire database stored on a tiny sliver of a ...

The History of GMT is well worth viewing , as is this post on time in space: See the Interactive Map Get more like this

Great conversations with other digerati at #chelttwestival last night with lots of interesting war stories: Social media/networks deployed in government departments are empowering ground-level staff to connect cross boundaries (geography, time, department, skill set...). And empowering them to connect straight to senior management. They love that; and so do the seniors - they get immediate access to real-time info about what's actually happening, without filtering, spin or time delays. But layers of middle management are threatened with irrelevance and resist change due to fears of power loss. Arab Spring suggests they won't succeed in holding the status quo! Jury is out on whether internal social networking can effect positive change in smaller organisations: with under 100 staff (the overwhelming majority of outfits) there might not be enough overlap of affinity group interests to catalyse viable sub-group activity. It certainly can't be done without a supportive cul...

Recently I was told that Richard Olivier (son of renowned actor, Laurence) uses Shakespeare insights to coach leadership skills . It just occurred to me that other literary figures have much to teach business, too. I remember school studies on Chaucer's Wife of Bath . In her tale the queen famously tasked a knight with discovering what women want most in the world . The tale's answer, of course, is that women want to be in charge [of their husbands and lovers], to have the authority to make their own choices . Just like customers do. (It's this insight that's leading our emphasis upon customer managed relationships  rather than the more usual Customer Relationship Management.) There's a great insight here for how to treat customers. Marketing is not about bringing a product we've built to the market and persuading people to want it; it should be about discovering what the marketplace wants and needs - and feeding the results to those in the business who ...

How many companies pay an invoice, by electronic funds transfer, the day it's been approved for payment? How many companies encourage their employees to take 'thinking time?' How many companies have an informal rule that senior managers leave the building within minutes of the end of the official working day, and encourage staff to do the same, to counter the temptation to work around the clock? The client I'm working with this week does all these things, and very many more, because of a deeply held ethical commitment that emphasises the importance of people in the business (customers and suppliers as well as employees) instead of the pursuit of wealth at any cost.  How many companies have a sensitive alcohol policy? My client does not reimburse alcohol when entertaining business contacts; but, so as not to embarrass the guest by revealing that, if they take someone to dinner and the guest wants a glass of beer or wine with the meal, the host will settle the bill w...