I write here when something crosses my mind that’s worth sharing. No schedule, no filler. Subscribe if you want the rare update that adds value, and nothing that doesn’t.
Looking back at my biggest failures across almost thirty years as an independent consultant, I had to admit that the causes were not always beyond my control. Quite often the culprit was my own ego. Passion is not a bad thing in itself. Believing in a client, caring deeply about...
Anyone who has been in advisory consulting for a few years was probably told at one point that the advise given is just common sense. Perhaps it is. Yet, why is common sense so hard to come by these days?...
For some time now the term AI has been hijacked by marketing departments. AI-this, AI-that. At this rate I am waiting for the supermarket to start advertising AI-optimised carrots. have seen this before. In the late nineties everyone told me to rebrand as an eConsultant. It was the future, they...
Any title written in a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and dots. Particularly when it exceeds three letters in total. You know the ones. Self-bestowed titles such as Expert, Guru, Aficionado, or Hero. Here is the distinction worth making: if someone else calls you that, you earned it. It...
In times of seemingly fluid commitments to long-standing alliances and understandings, politicians are well-advised to remember the words of Henry Kissinger. Counties have interests, not friends...
Gutenberg’s printing press was feared by scribes all over the European continent. Scribes in Paris managed to have this new invention banned. Well, for twenty years. The industrial Revolution lead to the mechanization of factories. The Spinning Jenny, a weaving machine, could do the work of many weavers at once....
If you are regularly brought in to help with a specific task, you are not a consultant. You are a contractor. You might be a programmer who builds software solutions, contributes to a client’s codebase, and genuinely believes that improving their technology improves their business. That may well be true....
There is only one language-processing centre in anyone’s brain. We can either listen, speak, write, or read at the same time. Problem is that of you start correcting yourself, you are unconsciously reading what you are thinking and writing, interrupting the free flow of thoughts. That great idea you just...
Inventors won’t make a dent without a savvy innovator. And without inventions, an innovator has nothing to market. Take Apple Inc for instance. Wozniak was the inventor behind the early Apple computers and Jobs a great marketeer. In isolation neither of them would have succeed, but together they formed a...
I fully support activism. Even passionate activism. But when predicted outcomes are wildly exaggerated, in terms of both impact and timeline, activism tips into alarmism. And alarmism is self-defeating. Exaggerated claims are easy to refute and easier to ridicule. Doubters do not even need to work hard. They simply point...