5 min read
Scafell Pike — More Than Just Getting to the Top
Five hours and 23 minutes, one fall and one broken walking pole, and a summit with no view at all — and why none of that turned out to matter.
The journal
Everything I've written
Notes and essays on the things I work on, think about and experience — across life, adventure, consulting and technology.
4 min read
I Was Going to Ride Anyway. So Why Am I Asking You for Money?
Next month I start a month of riding for Prostate Cancer UK. The riding is the easy half. The asking is the part nobody writes about, and it is harder when you have no personal story to hold out.
4 min read
You Outsourced the Work. So Who Answers to Your Customers?
The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill will require suppliers to tell their customers about incidents likely to affect them. That this needs legislating is the interesting part, and it says something about what most contracts leave out.
4 min read
The Experience Is Decided Elsewhere: Why Customer Experience Programmes Move the Score and Not the Service
Organisations invest in the part of the experience they can see and control — the app, the portal, the contact centre. The things that actually decide how it feels are funded somewhere else entirely.
4 min read
A New Dog, the Same Forest. So Why Does the Walk Feel So Different?
We said goodbye to our old labrador in March, after nearly sixteen years. The puppy who followed him is three months old, nothing like him, and quite strong enough to make a forest walk a negotiation rather than a stroll.
4 min read
You Assessed It Three Years Ago. Is It Still the Same Product?
Every check an organisation applies to software happens at the point of selection. The product then changes continuously, and the control never fires again. Most organisations pay the revised price without reviewing what they now own.
4 min read
The Decision Nobody Owns: Why Organisations Move Slower Than Their Plans
Change is rarely slow because the work is hard. It is slow because it stops, again and again, waiting for an answer that has no owner and no date — and nobody ever puts a price on the waiting.
4 min read
A Set Night and a Computer Game. So Why Is That What Worked?
I have three layers of friends and have only recently been honest with myself about the first one. What saved the innermost layer was not effort or good intentions. It was a fixed slot in the week, and a game none of us will admit to in public.
4 min read
Your Data Is in London. So Whose Law Applies to It?
Sovereignty gets asked as a location question, and location is the easy part. Where the servers sit and which courts can compel disclosure are two different things, and only one of them appears on a procurement checklist.