The tradition of New Year resolutions can be traced back to the ancient Babylonians, who believed that your actions on the first day of the new year, defined the course of the whole year.  Entry Point is also an important design principle, as people do judge books by their covers, internet sites by their first page and buildings by their lobbies (as well as potential partners by their looks).   Read more »

“Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.” – Octavio Paz

“We are rarely proud when we are alone.”  - Voltaire Read more »

A tidy mind

For those overwhelmed by information or data (a common problem in business intelligence), it always helps to sort your information in order to make better sense of what you have.  According to the design principle of ‘Five Hat Racks’, there are five ways to organise information: by category, time, location, alphabet and continuum*.  [*Continuum is sometimes renamed hierarchy, providing the simple acronym of LATCH.] Read more »

“Hire character, train skill.”  - Peter Schutz

I was asked recently, “what is the value of training?”  After recovering from the challenge of the question, we had a great discussion of my friend’s perceptions of training (which were negative based on recent experiences) and of how effective training could be different.  This led to a discussion of how to measure the impact of training, for which there is one key reference (and deservedly so). Read more »