Principles and Patterns over Dogma and Rules

Transforming our organisations will require huge shifts in basic digital literacy and ways of working for almost every employee outside of technology & development teams. New digital hotspots are starting to emerge, but scaling and replicating these emerging areas...

Overcoming Hidden Obstacles in Transforming Bank Operations

As the COO of a new bank-owned fintech, my first task was to set up the new company’s operations to support users on our app and our network of partner merchants. Our goal was to deliver a superior customer experience through intelligent capabilities like...

Getting lost in the organisational cave

Organisations generate rules and guidelines to govern behaviour and to avoid problematic outcomes, but over time these rules can chip away at the sense of ownership, autonomy and accountability that we want to see in a modern workplace. Getting the balance right is...

The Antidote to the Anti-Social Enterprise

Last week, Meta launched its anticipated Threads platform, a Twitter-esque experience, linked to your Instagram account.  Ever an early adopter of social media, I signed up, and immediately got a wave of nostalgia from 15 years ago joining Twitter for the first time....

Cracking the Code: Systems, Not Processes in Operations

A couple of years ago, in a fast-growing convenience retail company, I took on a new responsibility – operations. As a newly-appointed Operations Director, I was overwhelmed with the details of how individual processes work, urgent high-risk escalations, and...

Continuous Improvement: The big juggle

A common fallacy in team working is the assumption that productivity and continuous improvement are strongly correlated, meaning that when one improves so does the other. In fact, we need to juggle both at the same time, and that means paying attention to the subtle...