Too Much Bloody Choice (Part 2)

After spending months digitising my CD’s I decided to go for streaming as Tidal offered lossless sound quality and almost infinite choice of rock, jazz, blues and classical music. They even have stuff I recorded off Radio Luxembourg on AM with the signal fading regularly on a tape recorder! At first it was paradise – listen to virtually anything you want, when you want without the risk of buying a CD (or an LP) for a fair bit of money and discovering you don’t really like it. But after a while I got the “Ben and Jerry’s” again: instead of examining my limited number of discs and deciding on the strength of the cover or the memory of the disc’s contents as I’d played it so often, I was again stumped by the infiniteness of it all.

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Too Much Bloody Choice (part 1)

When I was a kid if you had any choice at all it was “Take it or leave it”. As time progressed, we actually got BBC Home Service (for topical events, Women’s Hour, the original soap “The Archers” and half-hour comedies), the Third Programme (heavy culture) and the Light Programme (for music Dads and Grandads appreciated) on what we called the wireless.

I can first remember being utterly flummoxed by the range of choice when visiting Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory in Vermont years ago. After an entertaining tour including us having answer questions with “moo” instead of “yes” we queued up to get ice cream. From a distance we could make out the numerous varieties, most of which were new to us then, so we pondered which to choose.

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Agililly – an emergency

Clarification: Since we are now trying to better understand companies and organizations as living organisms, what appealed to me about this posting was turning the highly topical and much sought-after characteristic of agility into a person – Agililly. With the constant indispensable companion and pioneer Scrummy in the role of Scrum Master – a mostly overworked and often ignored evangelist for the necessary principles and practices. The fact that the scene takes place in a hospital should not really come as a surprise.

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Feeling strategies – with dedication and passion against blind trust

This is a new text from our “guest writer” Christoph Henties.

A chorus on strategy

“Felt is not recognized.

Recognised is not formulated.

Formulated is not proclaimed.

Proclaimed is not understood.

Understood is not agreed.

Agreed is not applied.

Applied is not maintained.

Maintained is not felt. Felt is not…!”

Whether you are a jazz or classical music fan, love pulsating swing or soulful ballads, everyone can musically intonate the above chorus, the “strategy song”, in their own way. And as a rule, harmonies and songs, especially if you like them, become a catchy tune in your memory – they play themselves, so to speak, almost involuntarily recurring in your “spiritual ear”. How nice it would be if this metaphor also applied to companies‘ extensively elaborated strategic plans.

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