Fractional IT Directors

It's been a while since my last blog and I have no excuse. There have been plenty of changes though, all for the better. Now working with a business partner under the new name of Freeman Clarke, we have merged our separate companies in to one and have forged a relationship with The FD Centre that has out rocket fuel in our tank.

The partnership with The FD Centre confirms that the time of the Fractional IT Director has come and my co-founder and I are pioneering in this space. In previous recessions companies cut IT to make ends meet, this time they are seeing IT as a way to drive out of recession, gain new revenue streams and improve existing ones. The problem being is that these grand ambitions are not sustainable without good understanding of IT and its capabilities. This is exactly where Freeman Clarke are, we provide IT Directors with a wealth of both small and large company experience on anything between a day a month and a day a week and take ownership of of technology at board level with only the client's interests at heart. That's the kicker: We're independent, we're agnostic and we have no other products to push and thus no hidden agenda. We're want to help make companies successful through the judicious use of technology and thus fulfil our own passion - making sure people and companies achieve their goals.

We're looking for CEOs and Owner/Managers who recognise they need external board level advice to make their IT sing, if you're that person, get in touch.

The Basics of Mobile Device Security

It's come to light recently that NASA has lost around 48 laptops over the past few years, all of which did not have any security protection, not even encryption. For a large company, this is unforgivable, they should know better. Even for a small company, really there should be no excuse not to put in place basic protection for your mobile assets.

However, the task gets more tricky now that there's a growing BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) culture sweeping the office. When people use their own devices, what right has the corporation got over the device? I think it comes down to two basics:

• Does the device attach to the company network, i.e. actually sit inside the corporate firewalls?
• Does the device hold, store or manipulate company data, i.e. data that is owned by the company?

If you can answer "Yes" to either of those questions then regardless of who owns the device, you and your company must insist that the device has certain security capabilities implemented. I would insist that they have:

• User-ID/Password Secured Login: No computer should hold company data that isn't at least secured from prying eyes by a password to log in. This goes for mobile devices as well as computers - most now have the ability to use either a passcode or swipe-code (not just the basic swipe) to enable access.
• Anti-Virus/Mal-Ware & Firewall: Another basic, but many people don't bother. For Windows based devices, it's absolutely essential, but even on devices that are supposed to be safe (Apple/Linux), you should probably insist on it.
• Data Encryption: This should go hand-in-hand with the system log in requirement. Most systems have the capability to encrypt data, it should be insisted upon.

If the person who's device it is declines to implement these requirements, then you must decline access to your company's network and data, it's as simple as that. The IT department needs air-cover from the CEO to ensure people don't creep round to the back-door and get access by pulling a favour.

If you want to go a few steps further, I'd suggest two other requirements:

• Tracking Software: Individuals can implement tracking software on their devices very easily, many are free private use. Prey being a good example.
• Remote Wipe: More devices are now getting the ability to instigate a remote wipe, but there are also 3rd party applications that will do the remote wipe for you.

Above all, pro-actively manage this so you don't have an incident down the line. Put in place a policy that applies to all devices being used within the company regardless of ownership and insist that your employees stick to it. Make sure it's regularly communicated, that you do random audits and people know the consequences of not sticking to policy.

How to find good developers

Most of the time, those who need developers are not themselves going to be developers, so when you're the CEO of a small company in need of a developer, how can you go about finding the right developers with the right level of experience for your website, application or mobile app?

Firstly, let me make things clear with regards to applications. If you're not considering commercial off the shelf packages rather than inventing it yourself, then you're mad, In all likelihood a package already exists to do what you want to do. No, really it will. Go look and save yourself a lot of heart-ache.

Now, if you're still determined to develop something yourself, you need to be sure that you're getting the right person or people to do it for you. So, how do you know? You're not a coder, you've probably interviewed and assessed many, many individuals in your time, but from the interview process you'd never know whether they can code or not. Here's some news: You don't need to because someone else knows for you.

If developers are who they say they are then they'll have a long list of happy and successful clients. Taking the time to take up references is the way to ensure that you get someone who is capable of delivering what you want.

The important bit is not to take up just one reference, but to take up several, maybe as many as five. It should only take you about half an hour to do all five, it's not a big time-waster. You need to take up several because developers can always find one client who'll say they were great, but if they're not that great, they're going to struggle to find five who'll be willing to sing their praises.

On top of that, here's the kicker: The actual development skills the person has will probably end up the least important part of someone's package for you. If your developer can't communicate, can't take your hazy, high level requirements and produce what you really wanted, can't manage their time properly and give you accurate estimates and deliver on time, then you don't want to work with them. Guess what, all this can be gained from the interview and a few decent telephone conversations with the candidates references.

So, don't get hung up on coder technical tests, go talk to their clients recent and in distant past and do a decent face-to-face interview. That's the best way you can find out how good someone is going to be for your company, not by them getting more than seven out of ten on a technical test.

Planning for Business Continuity

People are usually great in a crisis, heroes appear, resolve the problems, get things back on track. But, why does a business have a need for heroes in the first place? A business should be forward looking enough to spot the potential crisis or outage. However, business continuity is far from sexy, particularly when everything working just tickety-boo.

So, business continuity planning is not just about having a plan for when things go wrong, it's central plank is to ensure that where there is business risk, appropriate mitigation is put in place. For instance, a business completely reliant on their CMS should have redundancy built in and no single points of failure whilst a business that uses a CMS in a small area of their business should not need such belt and braces. Horses for courses.

So, think of business continuity as two separate things:

• The pro-active removal or reduction of risk within the business and,
• Plans for dealing with a risk if it turns in to an issue.

Within the businesses technology infrastructure, there are three high level areas that need to be addressed:

• Single points of failure: If a single point of failure will significantly reduce the ability of the business to operate then it should be addressed, pragmatically. There's no point in implementing something that costs an arm and a leg that will only be used less than once a year.
• Siting of systems: Consider carefully siting of systems, for instance, siting an Email server in the office rather than the data-centre is convenient for staff, maybe, but if office internet links go down the company is far more cut off from the outside world than they would be if the Email server was sited in a data centre.
• Data back-up: This is simple: Make back-ups, regularly, keep an up to date set off site in a safe and secure place and test them regularly. It doesn't have to be sophisticated and indeed some of the cloud offerings are so cheap or free that it's a no-brainer nowadays.

It's not exciting, it's not fun, it's not even that interesting. But without business continuity planning, businesses can be sunk in hours. Technology should really take the lead on this now because so many business systems are reliant on their technology. If you need help getting your business continuity plans in place, GreenBOLD can help.

Technology to Drive Us Out of the Slump

Kevin Peesker from Dell has written a great article on the Business Zone which outlines how technology is the special fertilizer that will enable a company to grow. I agree with all of it, it's really good stuff and it's good to see it finally acknowledged that technology will be key to companies driving out of the slump.

What's not detailed though is exactly how the technology outlined is going to get in to a company and deliver the detailed benefits. There's a brief piece at the bottom of the article about how you can go about getting going, but it really doesn't even touch the sides of the requirement.

A CEO taking this on and trying to deliver it all is going to fail nine times out of ten. It's not worth the risk. To really take and deliver on the benefits outlined in this article, a CEO needs to find an expert. This is where GreenBOLD comes in, we provide corporate experienced IT Directors who can really make a difference and get the technologies outlined in the article implemented and delivering the benefits.

For more information on what we can do, please visit our website.

Reasons for Changing your IT

There are many companies out there that just muddle along with their IT. I'm always amazed how often when I talk about IT being a "necessary evil" how many company directors nod and smile ruefully. It really doesn't have to be this way, IT should never be seen as a necessary evil, particularly in today's world where IT is all pervasive. IT should be a positive benefit to a business, an enabler and even driver of revenue.

Today, Tech Republic have published a Top 10 list of warning signs that you need to change your IT landscape. I suggest you read it and if you can check off two or more of the items, it's time to really look seriously at your technology and work with someone to get it resolved.

I think the most telling is 5) Your falling way behind your competitors and 9) You can't support telecommuters.

It really is that simple. Technology in today's business will help drive revenues if you do it right. However, it isn't enough just to implement a change, you've got to do the right change and make sure the change delivers.

One company I know invested £100k in changing their IT landscape, but unfortunately didn't use someone experienced in these kind of implementations and in the subsequent 18months after the project finished they lost at least £250k of revenue simply because the IT systems they'd put in to boost performance had not delivered. Now they're having to spend more to get things put right. It's sad to see so much money wasted.

So, the first thing on your list to "doing it right" needs to be finding an appropriate expert. The right experts do not exist inside support and service companies, they will have their own interests at heart. Instead, an independent expert with a history of helping companies turn things around in the technology department is what you need.

Suffice to say that my company provides such a service. We are independent, we have plenty of successful IT Change programs behind us and we stick around afterwards to make sure it all actually delivers on the promise.

If you read the Tech Republic Top 10 and recognise your company's IT status in that list, get in touch for a no obligation discussion.

IT Security: Changing Responsibilities

It's time for another of my motorbike analogies... This time on the topic of IT Security.

In a car, it's all about secondary safety - when you've had an accident, the metal cage, the seat-belts and the air-bag are all there to keep you safe. The car has become responsible for your safety. In contrast, when you learn to ride a motorbike, the instructors are at pains to tell you that keeping safe on a motorbike is all about primary safety: Don't have the accident in the first place. In other words, nothing else is going to take ownership of your safety, it's in your hands and your hands alone.

I strongly believe that IT Security needs to be like motorbike safety: Do everything you can to ensure that the incident doesn't happen in the first place. The question is, how do you get primary safety in the workplace rather than needing to rely solely on secondary safety?

I think it's simple: Primary Safety is about process, policy and training. Above all though it's about treating your employees like adults, giving them a sense of their own responsibility to keep the company safe and giving them the tools to enable them to have that responsibility. I'm not advocating removing secondary safety services, but if someone has no responsibility then they don't care about it because it's someone else's responsibility if things go wrong, not theirs and the risk of an incident is thus higher.

Investing in primary safety, giving people that responsibility and the tools to enable that responsibility will greatly reduce the likelihood of an incident happening in the first place.

If you want a non-motorbike analogy for this, there's clear evidence* of this on Kensington High Street in London. The council decided to remove all street furniture, place the bicycle bays in the middle of the street and take away all the railings. Madness you say, all that safety equipment gone, accidents will go up! No, not at all. Because pedestrians were handed back responsibility for their own safety, they were more careful and accidents involving pedestrians dropped by 44% over 2 years (the London average in comparison was a 17% drop).

The good news is that both IT Security and old-fashioned physical security are evolving fast and we're quickly getting to the stage where employees can be involvement in their own on-line safety. Over the next year or so, I think we'll see a dramatic change away from a policed security model to a community owned security model and as a result there'll be fewer incidents and people will enjoy a better working environment.

Here's to Primary safety!

*Look 2/3 the way down the article.

Blunt Instrument No More

In the last recession, yes, the one in the 90's, IT was cut and cut savagely. This time around in what looks to be a double-dip recession, IT is being cut far less. A sign, I think, that IT's role has moved from being peripheral to a business's profitability to one where it is core to a business and a driver of revenue.

Unfortunately, there are many CEOs, owner/managers who still view IT as a necessary evil, a blunt instrument that provides some services that do a basic job. However the days when IT was Email, Office and Printing are long gone. Now not only are people utilising technology to improve their working environment, but they're also using it to underpin and drive their productivity.
 
This is usually a bottom up process with the board and the CEO being the last to recognise or understand the need for the technology. This lag between the technology required to support the employee and the acknowledgement from the board that investment is required to provide that technology landscape can often be considerable and the result in pain for everyone.

People entering the world of work for the first time will never have experienced a time when the internet didn't exist for them. Their technology and connectivity is an extension of themselves and the idea of not having it is enough to refuse employment. Even for those who've been working for a lot longer will find technology is essential to their working life and not something they can do without.

The point is that CEOs should be less reactive and recognise the need for the right technology in the workplace. It really is no longer the blunt instrument, but more a multi-faceted, sophisticated tool capable of so much, it cannot be ignored.

Christmas: A time to switch off...

Over the Christmas period, there'll be very few people who don't "keep in touch" with work. Some will take it further and be unable to leave things alone disappearing from the family gathering for extended periods. The winking light on the phone, or the buzz from a blackberry as another email hits the mat has a huge magnetic attraction and it's hard to resist.

What is this obsession with allowing work to intrude so clearly in to our personal lives? Misplaced Loyalty? Self-Importance? Fear of failure? Fear of losing stature? A distraction from having to spend so long with the family? Probably some or all of the above. When the CEO seems determined to be able to communicate at any time of day or night, there's pressure on everyone else to do the same, even though they don't have the entourage to help.

Let's be blunt here: Unless you're being paid to be on call and responsible for specific systems and services that your company relies on over the festive period, you should feel able to switch off. If you're on holiday, you should be on holiday.

It's easy to blame the technology in these circumstance, but technology is just the conduit that enables us to allow work to creep in to our leisure time. We only have ourselves to blame! I recall a TV programme called "Why Don't You?" with the ironic signature tune lyrics of ""Why Don't You Switch Off Your Television Set And Go And Do Something Else Less Boring Instead." (interesting fact: Russell T Davis of Dr Who fame was a producer of the programme for a while). Every bit of technology has an off switch, we can use them, there's no reason why not.

Come on everyone, let's have a very merry, switched off, Christmas. Spending time with the family is important, we shouldn't be allowing the tech to get in the way of achieving that. Instead use it to bring the family closer together, for instance:

• Skype: Video conference with your family in far-flung places. It's great fun. Share present unwrapping with those overseas.
• Collaborative gaming: Most of the consoles now have multiplayer family friendly games to play. Start with Mario Kart on the Wii and go from there.
• Music: Load up the iP* with festive music and play it through the stereo.
• Pictures & Video: Use your tech to get creative and show others how your Christmas went, what about time-lapse photography of Christmas morning?
• Oh, and the first person to check their email pays a big forfeit.

Happy Christmas everyone!

UPDATE: The BBC today has a story stating that VW has decided to turn off email traffic to Blackberry devices when employee are not working. Well done!

Marry in haste, Repent at Leisure

It's a very old phrase, apparently first used in print by William Congreve, but it is ever more pertinent in the world of work. How many supplier relationships have started full of promise only to be foundering a year down the line. Most of the time, this is because the foundations of the relationship have been built on sand - an informal or thin-in-detail contract and neither party really knows what is being delivered or received.

If you want a good relationship with your technology suppliers, the effort is all in the prenuptials. Here are some ways to ensure that you don't end up in the divorce courts a few years down the line:

Choose Well: Making sure you have the right supplier for your company is a good start. Using a company just because a colleague from your chamber of commerce does is not a good enough reason. Your selection process needs to be rigorous. Don't ever allow a supplier to think they're in a one-horse race.

Be Clear: Make it very clear specifically what you want from the relationship, write it down and make sure the supplier understands what you want as well, get them to explain to you what they believe you want and if they've got it wrong go round it one more time.

Service Levels: If you don't agree your service levels, then this is going to be a major sticking point at some point in the future. If you don't know the rules to the dance, then you're going to be treading on each others toes. For instance, you need to know whether you can call them on a weekend and what service you can expect from them.

Communications: Once you're in a relationship, on-going communications is essential. Don't just leave it until something is going wrong. Meet regularly, have a fixed agenda to work through and a desired outcome. Review the reports, comment on performance. Above all, don't ignore your supplier because that's a sure way for the things to go west.

Relationships: Build relationships with the supplier, get to know them and make sure they get to know you. Face to face meetings, regular telephone calls, it all helps to build those relationships which means you gain flexibility and an improved service. Don't underestimate the value of a great relationship.

If you do end up repenting at leisure, don't hold on hoping things will improve. Initiate an improvement process with the supplier and if it doesn't work, terminate the relationship and walk away.

GreenBOLD can help you manage your IT suppliers, it's an integral part of what we provide to our customers. We help you build those relationships and get the most out of your suppliers.

Technology and Disaster Recovery

Yesterday, I stumbled across a rather scary statistic: 80% of invocations of a Disaster Recovery (DR) or Business Continuity (BC) processes were due to IT hardware failures. That is a scary and what it says to me is that there are many companies out there with a multitude of single points of failure in the IT infrastructure that they have not addressed. This is not perhaps that surprising; removing single points of failure from IT infrastructure usually costs money and it's hard for many CEOs to understand why they should pay for equipment that's just going to sit there idle waiting for a failure to happen.

I met a potential client recently who had invested over £100k on a completely new IT infrastructure. All that money and yet they still had a major single point of failure: Their main server. It was running multiple virtual servers and it sat in the basement of the office that had a history of floods. The cost of buying a small back-up server and sitting it on the 2nd floor of the office paled in to insignificance when compared with the amount of unbillable hours they would accumlate if the main server failed without a backup. I'm very disappointed with whichever company installed the kit in the first place, they should have known better than to agree to implement such a massive single point of failure in a brand new system.

There are 5 simple steps for ensuring your IT is ready for any Disaster:

1. Identify all the systems that enable the company to generate revenue
2. Analyse what type of risks you have within those systems and the consequences for the company should that risk become a reality
3. Evaluate your analysis and decide what to do, either remove the risks (buy more technology) or you decide to do nothing and leave the risk in place, but acknowledge they exist.
4. Document everything that you've found out and decided to do.
5. Maintain what you've achieved. This is not a one-off task, it needs to be continued and kept up to date.

Going through this process and producing a plan should at least make sure you're fully aware of your potential risk areas and be able to make prudent decisions on where to spend money and remove the single points of failure.

IT now plays a critical supporting role in generating revenue in the majority of companies. GreenBOLD provide a service implementing and managing DR & BC plans for companies. If you'd like to ensure your systems are always stable and available, get in touch.

To Cloud or not To Cloud, that is the question...

I attended the IPExpo at Earls Court the other week. There were clearly three trends: Virtualisation, Storage and Cloud. Virtualisation and storage are relatively easy to understand and recognise whether you need them or not, but the cloud is still a bit nebulous and can mean many different things to many different people.

As the CEO of a growing company, how do you know whether the cloud is a good idea or to be avoided right now? Whether to get in to the cloud or not is not an easy decision, it's a fundamental shift in technology strategy and philosophy. To get the right answer you need to thoroughly examine your company to see if it's ready for the cloud. Only if the company is ready will the benefits be fully realised.

Moving to the cloud when it's not appropriate could result in a costly failure.
My company, GreenBOLD have just released a short, easily readable, white paper giving some basic advice and some simple questions to ask yourself before you take your company's IT in to the cloud. It's downloadable here.

However, ahead of downloading it, three things you should think about are:

• Where's my data and who has access to it? Your data will be moving from the confines of your own environment to the custody of a third party. How comfortable does that make you feel? Data Protection means different things in different countries.
• What security is in place? Cloud solutions are accessed via the internet so you are wholly reliant on the third party's security systems to prevent anyone accessing your systems. Is that a situation you can manage?
• What would you do if access to your cloud solution suddenly failed? It's not impossible that the third party hosting company could go off line, whether it's a technical or financial disaster. In those circumstances what would you do? How would you recover?

The white paper has more questions that you should think about before you dive in to the cloud. Feel free to contact us to discuss your thoughts around the Cloud in more detail. GreenBOLD have experienced senior IT leaders who have implemented cloud-based solutions before and could help you make the right decision.

The conundrum of Social Media and Time-shifting

Two things people like:

• TV time-shifting a la Tivo, BBC iPlayer or Sky+. It's brilliant, pause/rewind live TV, record a show whilst watching another, you know how it works, we wouldn't be without it.
• Social Networking during TV shows, twittering about X-Factor, facebooking on how bad they're dancing on Strictly, whatever, it really does add to the experience. Again, increasingly people wouldn't be without it.

Now, here's the kicker: These two things people love are fundamentally incompatible. If you're watching a time-shifted show then the web2.0 experience is impossible. Even a few minutes pause for a quick toilet trip means social networking moves from being a great part of the experience to becoming a source of irritating spoilers.

Is there any way the two can come together again once the viewer has done any kind of time-shift? I can see the idea of time-shifting web2.0 experiences alongside the time-shifted show, but that's going to be a one-way street - certainly it can no longer be an interactive opportunity.

Acknowledging that read-only is possible, can the web2.0 experience be linked to the time-shifted show itself? When you start to think about it, the scope of the problem gets very big, very quickly because of the variety of ways in which time-shifting now happens and the sources from which people get their time-shifting.

So, the question is: Will people go back to watching programmed TV rather than time-shifted TV so they can take part in social media associated with the programme? Maybe, if its worth it. If I was a TV channel exec I'd be driving hard at getting the social media element of the programme because it's the best way to retain an audience in these fragmented viewing times. What do you think?

A Cloud Explosion?

Today, Hexus published an article on SME adoption of the cloud. Apparently, it's going great guns and SMEs are gagging to use it and once they are using it they want to increase their use of it.

The research undertaken by CompTIA found that 18% of UK SMEs use cloud solutions with a further 30% planning implementations over the coming year. Those that had already adopted the cloud were very pleased with the experience and a whopping 81% planned to increase their usage.

Wow! I'm currently writing a white paper specifically for SMEs and whether they should join the cloud bang-wagon or not. It looks like it's well timed. It's not quite ready yet, so in the meantime, here's a few things to think about when you're considering the cloud for your company:

• Service: The internet is not a guaranteed service, there are no service levels associated with it. It could go down at any time and there'd be nothing you could do. Assuming that you're happy with this, you then need to understand and be happy with the service levels being offered by the hosting company, do they fit in with your company's own service requirements, and for that matter your customers?
• Where's my Data?: Knowing where your data is and who has access to it is something you should be absolutely certain of nailing down. In addition, what governmental data-protection legislation does it fall under? For instance, the US has far less stringent data protection requirements than the UK, particularly since the patriot act.
• Security: If you're accessing the service via the internet, it's only the security of the hosting company that stops anyone with internet access getting at your systems. Knowing this, you should be ensuring that the hosting company has security of your systems front and center.

Above all though, if you think the cloud is for you, investigate things first. Don't jump in and preferably use someone who has previous experience to make sure you get the service you require rather than one the hosting company decides you want. GreenBOLD can help with this through a part-time IT Project Manager with hosting/cloud experience.

Be Successful at Projects in SMEs

The idea behind projects isn't complicated, but lots of projects still fail in both large and small companies. A project can be defined as bringing about change delivering something that you don't have now that is not business as usual. So far, so good, that doesn't sound that hard to do, how much could go wrong?

The truth is that there are a myriad of ways in which a project can go wrong. A lack of senior level ownership, no-one being held responsible for the delivery of the project, a continuously changing scope with very few requirements, nothing in place to show that the project has delivered what was required. The list goes on.

Then there's all those different methodologies that are supposed to enable you to deliver projects for you if only you follow them thoroughly, but in many instances they just add complexity to what should be a simple and easy path to follow. This is particularly the case within small and medium enterprises where a methodology would swamp the project and bog it down in red tape that really isn't adding value.

So, how do you up the odds on delivering a successful project? My company, GreenBOLD, has recently written a further one-pager in it's 10 Ways series which outlines ten ways to have a successful project. Nothing in there is rocket science, in fact some would say its common sense. If that were the case, why are all ten points so often ignored? It's not a guaranteed method for success, but at least by checking off the points it will make success more likely.

Ownership is first on the list, someone somewhere must own the project, orphaned projects are doomed to failure. There must be an interest in the project at a senior level, preferably someone on the board. Second on the list is Responsibility. Having someone responsible for the project is absolutely fundamental, they can then take responsibility for the rest of the items in our document.

Unfortunately projects are often given to people without the time to dedicate to delivering the project properly either through time pressures or through a lack of experience. This again most often dooms a project to failure. This is something that my company, GreenBOLD can help with: We provide as part of our service part-time project management services from people who have a wealth of project management experience in corporate and SME environments. Utilising a GreenBOLD professional will give you a far higher chance of success than anything else, check our website for details and tell us about your project via the contact form.

Details matter to fickle customers like me

I heard a story once about an airline that found it was losing customers to a rival airline because the rival airline had an additional sausage in their breakfast. I don't know if it's true or not, but I can well believe it. When customers can make a choice, they can be incredible fickle.

However, is it always best to go to this level of detail with a customer during a project, it's not always clear, particularly when you're trying to work out what your customer's customer will want. I guess the answer is: Sometimes. The problem is knowing when that "Sometimes" actually is. I've just witnessed this whilst on holiday and I'm struggling to understand how it could have been missed when they got so much else right.

My family and I stayed in a family all inclusive resort - lots of kids of all ages. Very child friendly, ramps for prams everywhere, kiddie friendly pools, kids-clubs, soft drinks on tap, etc, etc. The whole place was geared up to accomodate families. Except in one fundamental area: The toilets, the male toilets to be precise.

In a male toilet, we men know that there will always be lots of urinals and just a couple of cubicals or stalls. These toilets were no different. The problem though was that all the urinals were at an adult male height, none could be used by children. So, the children had to use the cubicals. This led to frequent queues whilst the urinals stood empty. On top of that in one particular toilet, only one cubical was working, compounding the problem. Wouldn't you have thought that child-friendly urinals and wash-basins would have been a no-brainer. Apparently not.

It didn't affect the whole holiday, but we did have a few anxious moments as we waited for a cubicle to come free, naturally children never tend to know they need to pee before they *really* need to pee. In future though, and this is where I'm the fickle customer, I'd be very much influenced in to choosing a resort that had child friendly toilets over the resort we've just been to even if it cost more money.

Essentially they've potentially lost a customer because of one stupid little thing. They could have solved the problem by putting some steps in front of some of the urinals, but they've not even done that, I can't believe I'm the first to complain, or maybe I am...

Leadership courage: Changing your mind

I think I've blogged before about my love of cricket and how, particularly in the 5-day game, the captain of a side has to be a leader of men very much like in the workplace. England are currently playing India in 4 tests, if England win by 2 clear tests, they become the No.1 Test side in the world deposing India from that slot. This is a competitive series to say the least.

For non-cricketers this is difficult to explain, but by tea on Day 3, England were in command after much too'ing and fro'ing on Days 1 & 2. The ball before the tea interval gave India an opportunity to get Bell, the English batsman, out when he was doing very well. In fact they did get him out, but it wasn't in the spirit of the game and Bell had unwittingly been stupid and placed himself in a position where the Indians could exploit it and Bell was given out by the umpires.

Many captains would have stuck with their position, but MS Dhoni, the Indian Captain, over the interval actively listened to his players, sought their opinion, and also listened to the England captain and coach. He sought and found different views and opinions and on reflection, MS Dhoni decided he could change his mind and Bell was re-instated and was able to bat on.

A brave decision for any leader to make, but even more so considering the pressure situation and the dismissal was something that could have swung the game in India's favour once more. However, MS Dhoni listened to those around him and had the courage to change his mind in front of his team, a crowd of many thousands and the umpteen tv pundits all willing to give their view.

I'm not sure many leaders in work or in sport would have the courage to do that. In the end, the decision didn't affect the result at all, but most people acknowledge that MS Dhoni made the right one. It's a lesson for us all as leaders - have the courage to listen to your team and others and be willing to change your mind if you come to the conclusion you've made a mistake. Far better to admit to a mistake and quickly reverse it than stubbornly continue down the old path.

Well done MS Dhoni, I hope everyone learns something from your courage.

Groupnot (again)!

I blogged a while back about Groupon and the fact that I felt it was of limited life-span. Well, I'm glad to say that there appears to be a growing sense of reality about Groupon.

Earlier in June, David Heinemeier Hansson blogged about the Groupon IPO and how he was going to pass on the deal. My blog post was a view point, but he managed to put some actual figures on why it wouldn't work:

- They're spending $1.43 to make a $1.

- They raised $750m in the initial IPO and yet only have about $208m left after giving most of it to insiders and early investors and yet they're losing $117m per quarter!

- They've got 7,000+ employees and still growing

Will they ever manage to turn things around and make a profit? Not when they're chasing an ever diminishing set of small companies who actually want to do a Groupon deal. Amazon may well have taken years to show a profit, but at least it was investing in real-world stuff to enable it to do better in years to come. I remain convinced that this is not something I'll ever invest in...

I do however have a confession. Since leaving the comforts of corporate life, I am now involved in a web start up that has a group buying element in it and it's frustrating when you find yourself lumped in with Groupon and that whole business model. I know we're not a Groupon clone, but will our business opportunity be poisoned by Groupon's growing toxicity? I hope not...

A Perspective Change

A while back I blogged that it was likely I'd be leaving my current employment. In two weeks, that is going to come to pass. I'm fortunate that I'm leaving with a decent redundancy package and it's becoming quite a liberating experience! I also had to manage many redundancies in my team which is never easy, although I think it could have been a lot harder if I had not kept my team informed of what was going on throughout the whole process. If I had one piece of advice to leaders in similar circumstances it would be that you can never do enough communication and treating people like adults is critical.

The redundancy package has enabled me to take a completely different view on what to do next. I don't have to immediately go and get a new job, instead I'm looking at higher risk opportunities that, if they work out, will have higher rewards. The opportunity I'm most looking forward to working on is a web business start-up. The founder is a friend of mine and I'm going to join him in getting the venture funded and in to profit by year 2, well that's what our business plan says anyway. I'd love to tell more at this stage, but it's at a delicate stage and it'd be a shame to alert potential competitors to what we're doing! What I will say though is it's a massive step-change going from a big corporate to an unfunded start-up, but one that is rewarding in a whole different way.

On top of that, I'm creating my own business that aims to provide business partnership services in IT and HR to SMEs and 3rd Sector businesses. That business is called GreenBOLD, and I've already got the website up and running thanks to Donna at DFDesign. Now, I need to find out what CEOs/Owners/FDs/CFOs in £10m-£100m organisations think of the proposiation, contacts gratefully received!

So, I suspect over the coming months, I may have plenty to blog about. I've never sought funding before (we're looking for £500k), I've never started my own business before, I've never been out of corporate life for more than 2-3 months since I graduated, I've never worked for myself before or in a very small organisation, I've never taken this level of risk before... The future has never looked more bright and more bleak all at the same time ever before and quite frankly I'm loving it!

The PMO is dead, long live the PMO?

I spoke at a forum the other day hosted by Virtrium. Virtrium has recently completed a white paper on the PMO and I was there to state the case against the PMO. I'm not in favour of PMO, the ones I've seen in action have dragged their programmes down, brought more cost in and given individual project managers a way out of being responsible for what they're delivering. I put the case against the PMO after someone who advocated the PMO and before someone who debated the middle ground. We sparked some lively debate amoungst the attendees. All well and good.

What was most interesting for me was a chat with one of the attendees afterwards. Her premise was that whilst I didn't agree with a PMO, my company had a few other things in place that essentially provided a very light version of the PMO. Namely, we have a business change board and I run a rigorous ITIL change process which means however mad the project environment gets nothing gets to go live and into production unless it's fit to go in (unless we end up with a JFDI from the Exec sadly).

Upon reflection and discussing it with her for a bit, I had to admit that there was truth in her argument. So, do I after all believe in the PMO? No, definitely not. If the processes that my company uses would normally be contained within the PMO that does not a PMO make, but I do appreciate her point.

For a fast changing business, a fully fledged PMO doesn't make sense - a change review board does. Having some massively formal team who, in my view, drive down productivity and make project management the most complex thing on the planet is far from needed.

Give a project manager sole responsibility to deliver, get the owner of the project to manage the PM and make sure the owner is responsible for the results of the project. That's what breeds successful projects. How the project manager and the owner go about delivering the project is neither here nor there, but the project will be focused on delivery and being fit for purpose and it encourages projects that won't deliver what's required to be killed off quickly.

As always, I remain open to having my mind changed, but so far, I've not seen anything that's going to change my mind on PMO functions right now.