One of my roles as a “management consultant who happens to do tech” is to go into organizations and look for ways in which things can be streamlined and make information more accessible. Organizations of all stripes struggle with this, and periodically it’s good to look at things with fresh eyes. Mapping the flow of…
It’s no surprise to say that for most of their 30-year existence, IT departments have not been held in high regard. Organizations grow over time based on perceived need. Every startup or small business I’ve ever known added a bookkeeper of some kind in short order, then grew over time to require more than accounting.…
In Asian cultures, there is a traditional event that takes place on a child’s one-year birthday that portends the child’s life choices going forward. Called Zhua Zhou in China, it’s literally “first birthday pick” or The Grabbing Game, where parents lay out a collection of items on a mat, and whichever item the child picks…
Remember the Tracy Kidder book, “The Soul of the New Machine“? Required reading in business school from almost the day it shipped, the author embedded with teams at Data General in Massachusetts, in their quest to build a new and better mini-computer (remember those?) in those in-between days between big iron mainframes and the eventual…
In my endless quest for knowledge about everything, I’ve been delving into why people are so rabid about Tesla. It’s fascinating to me how people can be so apparently ambivalent about EVs (and maybe even not care for Elon Musk) yet be in LURV with Tesla. So I’ve been reading a lot of their specs…
Not long ago, I bought myself a Scott’s reel push mower. I’ve always wanted one, and I found one for $20 at our Habitat for Humanity Re:Store. It looked new, but had zero grease in the gears and wasn’t properly set up. One side wasn’t tight enough to cut grass. Many people older than me…
Note: I started this post in late February 2020, before the pandemic lockdown, to remind and describe how companies have “pivoted” (hate that term) in the past due to societal mandates. Now I finally went back, post-surgery, to finish it… See the “Mad Men”-esque image above. Where’s your organization’s secretarial pool? Not long ago (my…
I can’t begin to tell you when I became a Craftsman. I can tell you that it’s been a long road. I think it started when we bought our first house, built in 1922. In no time, you find yourself presented with things that need fixing, and in no time you learn that most current-day…
To: AT&T, Uverse Division Fr: Gary Szabo, a loyal but disgruntled customer Dear AT&T: I’m writing to recommend some changes to your next version of the Pace 5031NV DSL modem, aka “the 2WIRE Uverse modem.” I UNDERSTAND the importance of making a trouble-free device; one that’s so bulletproof and simple in its’…
Every now and again, I have a technology-themed “Marcel Proust Moment”… In the first volume of Marcel Proust’s ‘Remembrance of Things Past,’ he dunks a cookie into his tea and immediately he’s transported back, into a reverie and remembrance of his life years before. That’s how I feel when I hear the latest news about Pine,…