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Authenticity: a real superpower

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Something that I believe to be core in the “Beyond Professionalism” manifesto is about how it is so much more important to be authentic than it is to be “professional”. How can you use authenticity in your career to take you to the next level? With the introduction of gamification to corporate learning and employee engagements, there was an acknowledgement, nay a concession made by the entire working world that workers are not in fact machines. Quite the opposite – teaching and upskilling yourself requires a great deal of external coercion and psychological “hacking” that cannot be achieved by simply being presented with an instruction manual. Whilst it may have been enough in the past to incentivise through necessity, the power shift caused by oversaturation of job offerings and massively enhanced consumer experiences, from the employers to the employees, has itself necessitated a shift towards cultivating better employee experiences. This sink or swim situation is often exactly the c...
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Gen AI, Leadership and New Beginnings

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Hello world. It's been a minute... The last couple of years have been a bit of a whirlwind - not just for me, but for the world at large. I'm not sure if you noticed, but Covid took a final bow and headed off stage-left to make way for some serious acts by the geopolitical climate, the global economy and the technosphere in particular. These tectonic movements have somewhat altered the state of play for pretty much everything - but particularly business and the world of work. I feel it's worth discussing some of these, given the purpose of this blog. Before we begin though, I have to be honest with you. It's taken a while for me personally to get back to a place where I felt like I could add value with this blog again - hence the extended hiatus. Of course, I've had a lot on my mind over the last couple of years - but haven't felt comfortable expressing any of it. Now though, I'm not going to take such a structured approach as before, with the hope that this...
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The future of… Humanity?

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  How big can you go? This big. Today, I’m posting a bit of an essay that I wrote some time ago, the results of a thought experiment I undertook in which I asked the question “Where is humanity going?”. I wanted to try to figure out the logical conclusion to all of our perpetual industry and began to deduce, along the way, some of the reasons why we do it. I hope you find this interesting. I will begin with an assertion. This assertion is based on the evidence of our collective history and the successful continuity of human life itself. It is thus: All advances in technology have a ultimate unified aim – to increase the efficiency of information accessibility for the purposes of enhancing the probability of making more effective decisions in order to ensure the survival of our species. Some advances are primary in forwarding this aim – some are secondary or even tertiary. Take for example the automation of a task, such as was achieved by many machines during the great industrial re...
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Location: London, UK
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You’ll never believe what happens when you click this post!

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  OMG what the heck is this? Is this just clickbait or is this for real? What’s gonna happen when you view this post? Probably nothing but let’s just make sure… Ha! Gotcha! Ah well, you’re in now, might as well stay to see what on earth this is all about. Probably a load of junk but you never know, could be something interesting… Once upon a time, there was this very big company, who liked to try and help make the world a better place. They hired lots of brilliant people, like Jill who was a whizz with computers and Jack who was really great at helping people use them. Jill and Jack made a great team, as they travelled all over the land, helping companies large and small to make better use of their computers. But there was a problem. While Jill and Jack were working with the companies, everything was really great and people loved their computers. But when they left to go to help another company, they quickly grew to hate them and started doing things the old way again. Jill and Jac...
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Fox and the Trots

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  Have I ever told you I used to be in a band? Yeah man, you were so rad… Well anyway, I’ve written a blog commemorating this fact and here it is. Now you know. Remember that band you used to be in as a teenager? You know, back when life was as simple as packing in your last class of the day, necking as many £2 pints in the pub next to college as you could in the hour before rehearsal with your mates, all showing up to the unit absolutely plastered and then just basically smashing your instruments together in a sort of frenzied passion before your parents came to pick you up at 9pm on a Wednesday each week? No? Well, fortunately for me I do – and I can tell you, it was pretty epic. Now I’m not some crazed rock god and will never claim to be – I just can’t seem to get the hair right – so rather than go down the usual rock band route we went down the… Disco, Funk and Soul one. After all, we had the instruments to make it work. How many college “battle of the bands” have you known to ...
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Location: London, UK
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Are you up to the Test?

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  Today’s instalment in the “Implementing Success” series discusses the importance of testing during project implementation as well as how to ensure you are prepared for testing to make the most of it. How successful you are as a Systems Implementer (SI) often comes down to how much value your client gets out of the system you just implemented for them. This might seem a little unfair, since SI’s don’t often own the product that they implement and so have no control over it’s overall functioning. However, what they do still have responsibility for is ensuring that it does at least do what they’ve said it will – that is, that the system is configured in line with agreed-upon and well-defined requirements. Let’s look at this from a customer’s point of view. As a customer, you will be looking to lean heavily upon your chosen SI throughout your implementation, to provide you with the knowledge and expertise that you need to make the most out of your new tool – and you should. A good SI...
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Location: London, UK
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Taking the Initiative on Initiatives

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The next instalment in the “Beyond Professionalism” series, today’s blog is all about seizing the initiative on… Initiatives. How do internal work initiatives come into being in the first place and what are they for? How important is your mindset when it comes to propelling your own career forwards? Read on to find out… Do you ever feel like there’s something missing from your work? Have you ever spotted a gaping hole in an existing process or felt a negative sentiment towards certain aspects of the job? Do you ever think about better ways of doing things? I’d wager yes – but the bigger question is, how have you reacted to this?  You might have noticed that most people choose to moan about it. There are a lot of reasons for this. It’s not their problem to solve. Moaning feels good. They’re too busy doing other things to do anything else. Are these good reasons though? Why is it somebody else’s problem when you’re the one feeling the effects of it? Are you really too busy to take th...
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Location: London, UK
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