Blog
Hearing the whisper against the roar
My mom is lying sedated and restrained. I don't know where things go from here. I've been here before. The previous recoveries were miracles and I don't think you can ask for more than one or two of those. How much damage has been done in this breakdown? A frail...
Express gratitude
M, a former colleague, a client and a friend visited me a few weeks back. He is one of the best people I have worked with. We worked with him in his role at a client over a number of projects. He has since gone to a global firm where he has worked on a number of...
Mom
9 minutes of unbelievable violence changed everything. You - the kindest, gentlest person imaginable - were robbed of peace forever. Four years later and there is still evidence of how you were beaten. But deeper than this is what you experienced. You have faced the...
Toxic chat
I wrote about losing everything.Nothing hurts more than losing people you are close to. During the challenges I've faced over the past few years, some of the loss of those people happened due to toxic chat. I know, because I was told about it or given the clues. When...
Zimbra Let’s Encrypt certificate installation stops working
This month my renewal of my Let's Encrypt certificate and upload to Zimbra stopped working, giving me the following error code:"error 20 at 0 depth lookup: unable to get local issuer certificate"Per this URL from Let's Encrypt, there appears to be a new intermediate...
The AI Agentic Workflow Explosion
After experiencing a profound moment of realization, the author delves deeply into the potential of AI, particularly agentic workflows, to drastically enhance productivity and change business practices. Adopting AI for iterative inference tasks and incorporating it into workflows, as visualized by visionaries like Andrew Ng, promises to redefine how tasks are executed. The evolving landscape includes agent-driven ecosystems, likely impacting software development and various industries, and foreshadows significant shifts in employment and monetization strategies. With the imminent release of GPT-5, which is anticipated to further integrate agents into workflows, the author foresees an AI-driven transformation that extends across multiple domains, potentially leading to a reimagined economy centered around AI capabilities.
AI Life Hacks – Transcription
Headline summary:1. Transcription to phone and then AI improvement helps me get work done on the move. 2. Speech-to-speech interaction with ChatGPT on my phone makes for an interactive learning process. Transcription as a Life HackTranscription is essential for us due...
Thoughts on (artificial) intelligence
AI's Got the Whole World in Its Hands The excitement surrounding AI is exploding, and with good reason. Yet, there's a fine line between enthusiasm and losing sight of the immediate, tangible benefits it brings. The power of this moment in AI's evolution is hard to...
Receiving difficult feedback
The difficulty I've encountered with feedback became particularly evident last Thursday when an employee who is leaving our company shared their thoughts with me. This feedback struck a deeper chord than most, causing a significant amount of discomfort. The pain...
My AI moment – helpful links
While I have been stunned by the emerging capability of AI (see here), the last few weeks have resulted in a series of moments that have stopped me in my tracks. I'll share more about that soon. But in the mean time, the following links have helped my journey. There...
Is AI the end of photography?
Photo by Bing using DALL-E I am often a technology sceptic. I've lived through the Dot Com crash and other hype cycles. I have been thoroughly sceptical of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning claims. I see their amazing potential, but most of what I read was...
Starting again
Losing everything tests every part of you. It also has levels. Losing a business at 30 doesn’t hit quite as hard as when you are near 50. That amplifies when everything you had was invested in that.
And a business is one thing. If that investment is crafted in individuals and how they do every thing, then you don’t just start again, even if you have the clients and the capital.
Of course there is more to life than a business. So if you combine those losses with losing people you love, relationships, family, etc, it can feel like you are naked and alone. It an make you doubt everything – especially yourself.
The devastation of Covid, lockdown, inflation, tech reset, etc is leaving many in similar circumstances.
And of course it is worse for many. Losing a loved one, a disabling car accident, cancer – there are a myriad of horrifically worse things than many go through. The average person goes through a lot.
But trauma is personal and not relative.
MBB have a problem
MBB (McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group – BCG – and Bain) have a problem with their business models.
Out of loyalty to some friends, I don’t comment much on MBB and I also think it is poor form to talk down your competitors. So I have written down much more critical views of some of their missteps / flaws and filed them away.
“When McKinsey Comes to Town” does a thorough job of cataloging some of McKinsey’s less celebrated history and there are other books such as “Deep Collusion” detailing some of Bain and BCG’s past mistakes too. I’ll leave those books to tell those stories and leave my more scathing criticisms unpublished.
This post is regarding a more fundamental issue that confronts not just MBB but other service based firms – including Goldman Sachs in its past partnership form.
Photo portfolio – browse
Browse my selected photos
Be kind
The average person is dealing with any of a combination of issues relating to relationships, divorce, mental health, sexuality, aging parents, struggling kids, young babies, bereavement, physical health, cancer, struggles at work, job loss and financial difficulty.
If you are not dealing with one or two of those, you are an outlier and very, very lucky. And you are likely to face them at some point.
Anyone can be kind. Treasure those that are.
If you love someone set them free
How many people are stuck in a relationship because they are needed? Because they don’t want to hurt someone by leaving?
“If you want to keep something precious
You got to lock it up and throw away the key
If you want to hold onto your possession
Don’t even think about me”
So much of “love” seems to be about need. About the relationship with the other person filling some gap.
“You can’t control an independent heart
Can’t tear the one you love apart
Forever conditioned to believe that we can’t live
We can’t live here and be happy with less
So many riches
So many souls
With everything we see that we want to possess”
How many of us have the guts to really test our love? Real love, the type turns everything about someone else into butterfly-inducing moments? How many of us have the strength to let that go?
“If you love somebody
If you love someone
If you love somebody
If you love someone, set them free
Set them free
Set them free
Set them free”
Watching someone walk away as you let them go is one of the hardest things in the world. Having the guts to set someone free – hoping they might come back but knowing they might not – is perhaps the ultimate test of how real love is.
Caring for employees – even if they don’t care about you
A quote we posted in 2018 on our Global Advisors feed was reposted the other day.
As sometimes happens, this one hit me as I have been ruminating about some team members who have recently moved on and what feels like their lack of appreciation for the enormous effort and care that was given to their development and membership of our team.
“As a leader, you need to care deeply, deeply about your people while not worrying or really even caring about what they think about you. Managing by trying to be liked is the path to ruin.” – Dick Costolo, Twitter CEO
I am a firm believer in servant leadership – and have given everything I could to team members based on the firm belief that ultimately the results provide the reward. When things don’t work out, people move on, etc, it can be tough when they are unaware of the agonising that went into decisions regarding their support, development promotion, etc.
SuiteCRM Auto Import of Emails not working
As per this thread – https://github.com/salesagility/SuiteCRM/pull/7459 – a problem with the email charset (apparently specifically with Office 365 emails?) cause auto import of emails to fail.
Are you filling a hole?
What if you achieved what you thought you wanted and you felt hollow inside?
If we consciously or unconsciously seek fulfillment to try and be happier, we are in danger of the hollowness that results from the proxy.
All that “Ghosting” and “Gaslighting” talk is not an instruction guide!
I am always amazed at how terms enter the popular lexicon.
Some drive me crazy as I hear some word used in the incorrect – and then popularized – context over and over again.
But beyond how these terms enter day-to-day phraseology, I am amazed at their seeming influence encouraging the behaviour they comment on.
I experience ghosting and gaslighting in everyday encounters. But I experience this in formerly close friendships and relationships too. The terms originated describing these far more abusive situations. There is no room for people like these in my life.
In the end, all you can do is to treat others as you wish them to treat you, rapidly eject those from your life that abuse that trust and jealously guard those that reciprocate.
Both gaslighting and ghosting can be far more abusive and hurtful than merely bad behaviour. Their normalisation is not a good trend for society.