Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

.

An article “How to make the rats run harder” in the AFR recently pointed me in this direction, which is great.  The article was written to promote a book “A whole new mind”, and references another, “Predictable Irrational” by Dan Ariely.  We have dutifully added both to our Amazon cart and will review in due course.

The article, and associated materials, is very relevant to discussions that are ongoing within our company about how to meet the challenges of the next 10 years.

.

The basic premise:

As is noted ad-nauseum these days – the lower paid, unskilled or semi-skilled work is being outsourced to other countries, or automated.

For people in OECD countries like Australia, that leaves everyone who remains chasing a growing number of jobs in the “knowledge economy” [replace with your favourite buzz-word here].

To motivate such people (where creativity is a core part of the job), a fundamentally different system of incentivisation and motivation is required, compared to the previous (Taylorist) world in which a crude combination of carrots and sticks was good enough to achieve an outcome.

read more »

For those who found value in the previous post about the 10,000 hour prerequisite required to achieve “Guru” status in your chosen field, there was a related article in the AFR recently.

The article “Open your mind to growth” (15th September) was written to promote the release of the book “Mindest: the new psychology of success” by Stanford psychology professor, Carol Dweck.

read more »

This commentary was initially included in a lengthy book review post about the book “Tale of Two Systems”.  Given I will be referring to these two documents on an ongoing basis, I have shifted the commentary to this separate page.

In the book, the 2nd key document is called the “Statement of Work” (SOW).

This, along with the “Concept Document” are the two key documents referenced in the book.   I agree there should only be two!

According to the book (p8) this “laid out the ‘how’, ‘who’ and ‘when’”.

The author notes that this was developed concurrently with the iterative development of the Concept (i.e. “What and Why) Document.

In my view, it is important that this was a separate document, as these types of details (whilst needed up-front) should not pad out a business case.

As a business owner, what I need is to know that the SOW exists and to have trust in the people who have developed the SOW – I do not necessarily need to read the details.

For our company, moving forward, we’ll place particular emphasis on conversations, and documentation, that answer together the:

HOW, WHO and WHEN

This commentary was initially included in a lengthy book review post about the book “Tale of Two Systems”.  Given I will be referring to these two documents on an ongoing basis, I have shifted the commentary to this separate page.

In the Tale of Two Systems, this is called “The Concept Document”.

This, along with the “Statement of Work” are the two key documents referenced in the book.   This model of only two key documents is certainly something worthwhile for us to follow…

Personally speaking (and knowing how language is loaded with semantics) I would prefer we even use the name “What and Why Document” to describe this one.

Paraphrasing the book, this is essentially the marketing document (i.e. the business case to which internal and external partners sign up).  It contains such things as:
1)  Financial projections
2)  Who we think the users are
3)  Their value proposition
4)  How much we think they will be willing to pay
5)  How much we think it will cost us to develop
6)  The risks and threats we see.

In other words:

WHAT and WHY

I know that someone recommended I read this one – I apologise for forgetting who it was!  Was it you, Justin?

I read this book as it claimed to answer some questions I had been pondering along the lines of “what’s this AGILE thing all about?” .

Shane’s review helped, but I still had loads more questions – as a result of which we loaded up our Amazon cart with quite a few books on the topic, of which this is the first I have reviewed.

1)  Binary Review

This book is written as a fictional tale of two separate software development projects within the same large company – one using “Lean and Agile” Software Development, and one using a more traditional (e.g. waterfall) approach.

The Book	What we thought
“A Tale of Two Systems”by Michael K Levine	. Useful (and very timely for us)!

.

As a novel, this book certainly does NOT qualify as “Un-Put-Down-Able”.

read more »

.

Having previously written about my views of the differences between the cultures at the Tarong and Stanwell power stations in the 1990’s, the former manager of the Stanwell station and inaugural CEO of Stanwell Corp (Ted Scott) sent me a copy of this book in order that I could gain a fuller view of his philosophy.

1)  Binary Review

I am very grateful that he chose to do so.

The Book	What we thought
“The Myth of Nine to Five”by Ted Scott and Phil Harker	.Great content (lots to consider)

Unlike the Richard Branson book, which I read in a couple of hours during the same holiday, this one is a small book that takes longer - as there is plenty of food for thought.

The tagline for the book = “a little book with a big message” does (in my view) reflect the contents.

read more »

This post was originally written to be part of a (lengthy) Book Review:  The Tale of Two Systems (an overview of Lean & Agile software development).

However, I thought I would need to refer to this numerous times in future, so have placed it on our blog as a separate post…

read more »

After a mere five hours sleep and with a nose that was running faster than Usain Bolt I really should not have gotten out of bed, let alone drive an hour and a half to the Gold Coast to attend an all day AIM seminar. Yet I am somewhat masochistic and managed to drag myself out of my warm, safe bed and drove the hour and a half to the Gold Coast. After getting lost in Robina for half an hour I finally found the AIM office and managed to make it just in time for the first of seven presentations.
read more »

	Book: Adversity Quotient Author: Paul G. Stoltz Phd Binary Review: 1
Full Disclosure – yes, that’s a tracked link to Amazon shown above. We buy quite a large number of books on a wide range of topics, all relevant to our business in some way. If you did happen to purchase the book from Amazon, they’d throw a few shekels our way, which would help us to buy (and hence publish reviews of) even more books. Thus, benefits would return to you…

If I had $40 for every time I heard the words “I can’t do this, it’s too hard,” I would be a high school maths tutor. Which I was. For seven years. And my response to every single teenager who uttered those words at me was to tell them point blank that they were wrong. They could do it, and would one day find it easy. By the end of the first term of tutoring all bar two of my thirty or so students had shown a drastic improvement in their grades. Little did I realise but when I was instilling in these students the principles that are fundamental to having a high Adversity Quotient, which is the subject of Paul Stoltz’ book.

read more »

.

Following Stephen’s review of the presentation made by Phillip Di Bella, I was pleasantly surprised to see that he had also bought us a copy of Phil’s new book “Roasted Passion”.

.

Binary Review

The book was a quick read (over and done with in 4 hours flying time to and from Melbourne this week).

The Book	What we thought
“Roasted Passion” by Robert Norton	. . Not a classic, but gets a gong as it has a few good points, and is a quick read

. read more »