Strategy and positioning

/Strategy and positioning

It’s all in your head

Yesterday the world lost a great theoretical physicist. It also lost a truly great communicator. Someone who could get people interested in highly complex, scientific topics by making them relevant and accessible.  He never made you feel that you were being ‘dumbed down to’, even though you knew you were. Stephen Hawking once said ‘theoretical physics is one of the few areas in which disability is not a serious handicap because it’s all in the head.’  It is this concept of 'all in the head' that I want to explore this week. I was once asked by a business leader [...]

2018-03-15T10:08:23+00:000 Comments
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I don’t like Freelancers

To put it in perspective, I don’t like the term “Freelance”. Too many people incorrectly interpret this as “a not-loyal job-hopper that will leave as soon as a better offer pops up.” I much more prefer the term “Independent Contractor.” Contrary to what is thought, a Contractor needs to have a very high level of loyalty towards the customer. The Contractor is there to solve a specific problem and needs to deliver the highest quality possible. In case of any lapse in performance, the assignment can quickly be terminated. This is not usually the case with employee contracts in most [...]

2018-01-29T16:51:36+00:000 Comments
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Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be!

I remember laughing out loud to this joke. Although it was more than forty years ago, it’s as if it were yesterday. I remember the place and person who first told it to me. And although I do not laugh out loud at it anymore, it still makes me smile. Recently I have been spending my evenings, not watching TV, or on social media but sitting in front of the fire reading Yuval Noah Harari’s excellent book ‘Sapiens’.  And although the writing at times is a bit loose (perhaps the translation) and one feels he jumps too far in his [...]

2018-01-24T18:26:42+00:000 Comments
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Hard business

I was in London at a HiFi trade show this weekend, talking with a colleague about a business leader we have both admired for several decades. Realising that the person in question must be in his mid to late seventies, we looked back at his successes and made a kind of mental list of what we thought it was that made him stand out from the crowd. We agreed on the following: He is extremely likeable. With a broad grin, his smile always disarms you. He always remembers a name – even after years of absence. He always had (and [...]

2017-10-05T09:13:35+00:000 Comments
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Who can be your Data Protection Superman/Superwoman ?

In the past weeks several communications via different media, blogs, … were addressing the need of thousands of Data Protection Officers (DPOs) across Europe for the coming year to ensure organizations' compliance to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a quest like none before ... At the same time the debate went on discussing the qualifications this person would need to show. The discussions between those that approach this question from a legal point of view (where the quest is originating) and those that see the resolution coming from within the technical departments of the organization (where part of the [...]

2017-01-07T10:45:17+00:000 Comments
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