Low-information diet and reducing workplace and technology stress

by Ramon Thomas in Business on 0909/070707/2007200720072007 • 1 Comment •

One the best resources I’ve encountered, thanks to the prolific Seth Godin, is ChangeThis.com, a website where experts publish short manifestos (ebooks) which are available at no cost to you. One of the recent ones really made an impact on how I’m using email.

The Low-Information Diet: How to Eliminate E-Mail Overload & Triple Productivity in 24 Hours by Timothy Ferriss. I want to emphasise that I am not recommending the Four-Hour Work Week book because I have read all the negative reviews on Amazon.com and agree with most of it. And what did it for me was how vociferously Donny Deutsch (appeared in The Apprentice) disagreed with him on a video interview posted on Four Hour Work Week blog.

What I am considering after reading this manifesto is developing a short presentation or seminar on how to reduce workplace stress and technology stress. If you have any stories or questions about this please take a moment to email me. I am excited about this because it really save companies a lot of money if they can improve workplace productivity and at the same time reduce stress. So I am looking forward to hearing your comments on technology and it’s role in workplace stress.

TEDGlobal 2007: Session 11: James Shikwati

by Ramon Thomas in Business/Events on 0707/060606/2007200720072007 • No Comments • , , , , , , ,

James Shikwati economistThis is the 2nd talk on the second last session of TEDGlobal 2007. We need to commercialising enterprises or entrepreneurship in Africa. Chris Anderson, TED curator, described him as one-man think tank, a libertarian economist.

Address famine as a business opportunity. Lost $200 million due to famine in Kenya. Estimated cost 300 to 500 million people to malaria and cost billions to the GDP of Africa. Young people in a project he is running are cleaning huts and using it as a business to fight mosquitoes. Exploit urban set-up with endless opportunities and offer more variety.

What is missing in Africa is confidence – not money! Africans sometimes think it’s someone else’s problem to fix things in Africa. We need to start using passion of young people to start businesses. Create Olympic style business plan competition to get young people interested and excited about business.

Now back to the Jeffrey Sacks debate. We need to understand how the world works, how the world thinks. The Aid debate operates under the constrained position i.e. the African person is in a box, somebody else must free him. We need to focus on releasing the African mind. Everybody talks about corruption. When a foreigner meets an African the first thing they see is corruption.  One example he quotes, which I’ve heard before is that in Africa not even the most corrupt or the poorest people will deny you water. Yet million of dollars are being spent on buying water like the very popular bottled water products.

With aid it’s like foreign countries subsidising their own companies in Africa. So African companies can never compete, being paralysed and never develop to a point where they can be world class. Keep focussing on entrepreneurship with young people. They are the future and can stop Africa crying.

Chris did a short Q&A with James in which he confronted him on aid debate.

For more information on James Shikwati visit the Inter Region Economic Network.  And read this excellent interview with SPIEGEL, For God’s Sake Please STOP Aid!

TEDGlobal 2007: Session 1: Euvin Naidoo

by Ramon Thomas in Business/Events on 0404/060606/2007200720072007 • No Comments • , , , , ,

Euvin NaidooTEDGlobal 2007: Africa the next chapter kicked off on Monday at 1h30pm in Arusha, Tanzania. The first session was called: The Africa You Don’t Know. And the first speaker was Euvin Naidoo, President of the South African chamber of Commerce, America. He started our talking about in Africa you have maybe 1000 languages and maybe as many as 2000 dialects. So you can say “invest” in over 1000 languages and it’ll be meaningless. He listed some examples of the private equity buyout of South African retail giant Edcon by Bain Capital. Nigeria exports more oil to American than Saudi Arabia. And if it’s current growth continues it’ll be one of the top 10 economies in the world by 2020. Egypt is setting up a new industrial zone. CNBC is launching in the first ever 24 hour business channel in Africa focussed on African business. Moody’s, one of the big rating agencies is setting up offices in Africa for the first time because they are expecting investment growth to continue

There is not many speakers from South Africa but it made me really proud that it opened with a South African. I really think Arthur Goldstuck should have been speaking here and maybe Herman Heunis, the founder of MXit and especially Mark Shuttleworth.

Day 1 – Futurex Conference 2007 – Jaco Viljoen on What makes Business Analysts tick?

by Ramon Thomas in Business/Events on 1717/050505/2007200720072007 • No Comments • , , , , , , , , ,

Jaco Viljoen from Software Futures gave one of the most unusual presentations I’ve ever seen in the last 10 years. He spoke about what makes and business analyst tick? He proceeded to explore how our brain functions and also delve very deeply into personality and psychometrics.

When you try to understand what makes a car drive, you have to look underneath the bonnet of the a car – at the workhorse of a car – the engine. When trying to understand a human being and you look underneath the bonnet of an analyst you will find his brain. The key is actually to focus on one aspect, the temperament and forget about the personality. It’s the age old comparison of nature vs nurture to some extent.

With assistance from Professor Smith at University of Johannesburg Jaco has been using Smith’s Temperament Typology (STT): Temperament vs Personality, to analyse business analysts. What makes one better than the other. In terms of the whole brain person only 4% of the population has this level of balance.

Using this temperament typology other opportunities and application in recruitment, training and further development (mentoring) arise. Success as an Analyst implies more than good process and technology tools. STT is useful for understanding people, especially analysts.

Here’s my video podcast interview with Jaco Viljoen:

For more information on

Day 1 – Futurex Conference 2007 – Cavin Griffiths on Business Intelligence Analysis

by Ramon Thomas in Business/Events on 1717/050505/2007200720072007 • No Comments • ,

Cavin Griffiths, Executive: Business Intelligence is a speaker from Telkom, one of the sponsors of the Futurex Conference. He spoke at a very high level about business intelligence the key to business success. When you realise how complex organisations have become and especially ones the size of Telkom, you understand there is no solution out of the box for business intelligence. And it is more about a culture and the people using it buying into the culture that makes it a success than anything else. Success in business intelligence depends on the right people with top management buy in. A CIO must understand he or she is running a business and is part of business team to generate sales and service customers – not to run an IT shop.

How is it done in Telkom? You can view the presentation below for more details. And you have to ask yourself truth tests. The test that measures you design framework. In Telkom the roll out of business intelligence took about 8 years to reach maturity. A big percentage of the resources have been developed internally especially in terms of report writing.

Here’s my video podcast interview with Cavin Griffiths:

And here’s Cavin’s presentation on Business Intelligence Analysis:


For more on business intelligence see this Wikipedia entry.

Day 1 – Futurex Conference 2007 – Robin Grace on Where Business Analysis Ends

by Ramon Thomas in Business/Events on 1717/050505/2007200720072007 • No Comments • ,

Business Analysis is a process produces something of value to the business. The elementary process is the lowest level of work that can be performed with business meaning. It must describe what is done not how. And it’s about describing the business not the technology. Documenting business information rules not entity relationships. Users will perceive it’s not an “IT thing” but a business case. When performing business analysis and use a business cases – this is the step that brings you into the systems domain.

There was no interview with Robin Grace but below you can view his presentation:

Day 1 – Futurex Conference 2007 – Roger Layton on Project Failures

by Ramon Thomas in Business/Events on 1717/050505/2007200720072007 • No Comments • , , , , ,

Topic: Project Failures Modes: Lessons from the Field

Roger Layton is a witty and inspirational speaker. The many years he spent lecturing and training comes through in the smooth delivery of his presentation. He is by far one of the best of the entire Futurex Conference speakers. In light of the eNatis failure people outside the Langlaagte Traffic Licensing stationed threatened to burn down the building. One of the major reasons is that the different stakeholders did not agree that there was a failure in the system. In that respect one could say that not communicating in itself is a failire.

So what is the basic premiss on project failures? Failure Avoidance!

Let us learn from other’s mistakes because this will improve our understanding of failure. Analysis of Google search on “Project Failure” identifies almost exclusively IT project failures. Engineering and other areas do not come up as frequently as IT project failures.

Roger’s definition of of “Failure” is the inability of the project to deliver the intended benefits to the identified stakeholders. Failure is also relative to project’s complexity. Looking at the track record of IT project the mainstream attitude or approach seems to be: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! The fear of failure of new systems overrides the need or value that can be derived from replacing old systems.

Some major failures mentioned is: MacDonald’s, IRS, National Health Service (UK) each spending hundreds of millions of dollars and in some cases billions!

Here’s my video post interview with Roger Layton:

And you can view his presentation here:


For more information contact Roger Layton and Associates via his website.

Day 1 – Futurex Conference 2007 – Lauri Elliot on Stakeholder Management

by Ramon Thomas in Business/Events on 1717/050505/2007200720072007 • No Comments • , , , , , , ,

Lauri worked for several Fortune 500 companies including Xerox. She discussed the importance of stakeholder management and relationships. There is a shift in power to the masses instead of the elite. And with this there is rising power in emerging markets instead of traditional markets. And as Stephen Covey once said, interdependence instead of independence is they way you create a culture of sharing and trust. What you want is partnership instead of domination; sharing instead of selfishness.

She emphasised the importance of Relationship. If your company does not manage relationships well you will fail. This is relates to key concepts from the Strategic Coach. Stakeholder management is all about managing these relationships. Instead of going into more details here please watch the video podcast interview with Lauri Elliot and see her presentation below for further details.

Day 1 – Futurex Conference 2007 – Elmar Roberg on Project Management

by Ramon Thomas in Business/Events on 1717/050505/2007200720072007 • No Comments • , , , , , ,

Elmar Roberg, a past president of the Computer Society, and current president of the Project Management Institute discusses Project Management the State of the Art.

Here is my 2nd video podcast interview with Elmar Roberg:

Elmar quoted Tom DeMarco as saying “people under pressure don’t think twice as fast.” Bad decisions are made when technology is ignored. Project Management is a young profession. And the first body was formed in 1965 is incidentally called Internet. Currently the Project Management Institute globally has over 230,000 members. Prince2 UK certification with 80,000 practitioners.

There is so many strategies and tools available in project management so if you just started using what you got you’ll be better off.

What is a Profession – initial education – accreditation of knowledge requirements – skills development – certification – licensing – professional development – professional societies – code of ethics – organisation certification.

Competence – basic knowledge set – you need to know what you are talking about. You need to have appropriate skills with years.

Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister did series of studies and one of they key findings in teams was that the strongest person is 10 times more productive than the weakest person. The weakest person from a quality perspective will produce 25 times more bugs or mistakes in their programming.

 

Capable project managers must be employed but just how good is your organisation as a project incubator – reference maturity models.

 

Elmar is a very vocal speaker generating great enthusiasm while speaking. I can tell for sure that he is very passionate about Project Management. And I would say that project management should be a compulsory course for all Computer Science and Information Systems student from first year through to third and fourth year. The benefits will be substantial in the long term with the quality of projects improving over time. This will bring us into a world class level of competitiveness when we contrast where we are compared to North America, Europe and Asia (especially India) for software development projects.

Here’s Elmar’s presentation with some more details…

Day 1 – Futurex 2007: Anthony Fitzhenry on the Technology Trends

by Ramon Thomas in Business/Events on 1616/050505/2007200720072007 • No Comments • , , , , , , , ,

Anthony Fitzhenry, CEO of Axiz, and IT Personality of the Year 2006, delivered the opening address at the annual Futurex Conference. The conference is co-located with the Futurex and Equip exhibition, which is possibly the biggest ICT exhibition in Africa. This is really a stunning presentation because it is about you, the consumer and eventually leads you into the opportunities for South African entrepreneurs. The biggest one in my opinion is really creating content for mobile platforms like cellphones and also developing more sophisticated applications like MXit for business or more specifically mobile commerce – allowing consumers to pay with their phones from airtime is a huge opportunity. Just think of 2.4 billion cellphones users vs 1 billion Internet users worldwide.

Here is Anthony’s presentation which you can also download from Slideshare.net. This was one of the highlights from the Futurex Conference, where most of the presentations have been sub-par, especially given the speakers are from the technology industry. This keynote for the 2007 Futurex Conference was in fact the last one where the Futurex branding was used.

And here is a my first ever video podcast with my new Sony Ericsson w880i recorded today:

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