The simple 4 letter word that underpins every improvement initiative.

The simple 4 letter word that underpins every improvement initiative.

Jul 24, 2017 | Governance, Lean, Operations

Improving the performance of businesses is often like being set loose in a commercial kitchen without a recipe. Random ingredients, absence of some staples, disaffected staff, erratic processes, and severe cost pressures, but still being expected to produce an experience people are prepared to pay for.

Not easy

However, every time I look back on a project, the common factor that has made the most difference is not what you would expect.

It is not the financials, or the marketing plan, or how well the sales force performed, it is more basic than all that, and enables all those things:

Flow.

Simple word, and an idea at the core of all performance improvement.

The concept of flow emerged from the work done to improve manufacturing processes by W. Edwards Deeming, Joseph Juran, and others, and was first widely implemented and documented by Toyota, then spread around the world as ‘Lean thinking’ and the ‘Toyota Production System’.

At the core of Lean is Flow, and at the core of any improvement in any process, physical or otherwise,  in any context, is flow.

The basic confusion is between being busy, and being productive. Jumping up and down in one spot may be  busy, but it is hardly productive unless you are killing ants.

Optimising flow in manufacturing operations requires the configuration of all the lines such that work passes unobstructed from job centre to job centre through to completion. The faster and more uninterrupted the flow, the higher the output.

Flow optimisation always requires the counter intuitive decision to leave unused capacity at points in the process, to avoid building Work in progress inventory, which act as ‘rapids’ in the flow metaphor. It usually feels wrong to leave available capacity unused, but the slowest work centre will be the limiting factor for  the whole process, and to keep the flow steady, the flow rate is limited by that slowest point. In addition, shit always happens, something breaks, an item spec ‘wanders, ingredient fails to come in as required, so there is always downtime of some sort. This means that  some spare capacity in the system is a requirement for  the flow to be matched to demand, or ‘Pull’ in Lean parlance.

A key component of flow is the orderly release of work into the process. A schedule is written based on priority and optimal flow, and is then executed without change. Queue jumping, to meet unscheduled customer expectations, is a common distraction from the plan that multiplies, disrupts everything, and often results in total turmoil in the flow. It is deadly to process optimisation.

These days, not as much manufacturing is done, after all many of us are told we are now knowledge workers.

Exactly the same principals apply. While it may be harder to see because there is no physical product moving down a production line, the thought process is identical.

The trouble with these non physical tasks, is that they come at us from every direction, often with little warning and lead time, and with ambiguous importance and priority. Unscheduled demands on our time.

How do you sort through the mess to optimise your productivity?

A now standard method is the scaling of Importance and urgency into quadrants. When analysing how our time is spent, most of us find that too much is spent in the not important/urgent quadrant, when we should be focusing on the important items, urgent or otherwise. It is almost always the important/not urgent tasks that get shuffled aside, and it is these items that have the greatest long term impact on the performance of an enterprise.

An alternative means to allocate time is on an ‘Impact/Effort’ continuum. Tasks that are high impact, low effort are the quick wins so beloved of consultants, by contrast, high effort, low impact tasks are just thankless tasks, and not worth doing.

Everyone is in charge of managing their time to some extent, the further away you are from a time driven physical process, the greater the amount if discretion you will have. It behoves you to work the tasks in front of you in order of priority. Responding to that email may seem important, after all it has come in, the ‘new email bleep’ (Pavlov would love this one were he still alive) has sounded, there is a sense of urgency generated, but in 99% of cases, what does it really matter of the email goes unopened.

In everything you do, consider the impact and benefits of optimising Flow.

Photo credit  Dirk Veltkamp: Thredbo river.

 

4 essential questions for the new leader to ask

4 essential questions for the new leader to ask

Jul 17, 2017 | Governance, Leadership

Taking the top job in a new organisation is a stressful experience. No amount of planning and research can properly inform you of the cultural  DNA of the organisation you will be taking over. That knowledge will only come over time, and only if you go actively looking for it.

In many cases, new leaders do  not go looking, and as a result usually do not know what it is they are changing by their presence, and often do not care, to their cost.

Nothing is as resilient as a culture that perceives itself to be under threat from a new leader who ignores it.

In the course of coaching leaders, I encourage them to be absolutely transparent, to never shy away from those often difficult but clarifying conversations that are the daily menu of leadership. For the new leader taking a role in a new organisation, I encourage them to act like a sponge in the first few weeks, and understand the nuances of what they are really getting into.

Four simple questions can be very useful, and I encourage you to ask them of every senior employee you can in that very first familiarisation encounter, and if possible to communicate the questions beforehand, to allow them to think about the answers.

  • What three things do you think we should change.
  • What three things should we leave absolutely alone
  • What three things do you most want me to do
  • What three things would you encourage me not to do.

After you have asked as many of the existing employees as practical the same four questions, you will have a pretty good picture of the way things are around the place, and what the pressing issues are.

It is a bit like learning to swim.

You cannot do it from a book, you have to get into the water to experience it for yourself, and in this case the four questions are similar to learning to dog paddle, and to stick your face under water for the first time.

Cartoon credit: Hugh McLeod @ Gaping Void.

10 point leadership framework for reviving SME manufacturing businesses.

10 point leadership framework for reviving SME manufacturing businesses.

Jun 26, 2017 | Governance, Leadership

The Modest sized manufacturing sector in Australia has  a huge problem. It is being wiped out like an insect  pest at your backyard barbie. The problem with that is that they provide the bulk of employment and training in the economy, and without them, we will become a nation of baristas.

Perhaps it is not that gloomy, there are some exceptional little businesses out there, intensely competitive on the world stage, aggressive, and innovative, but they are a rarity.

For the average manufacturer, the task of just surviving is daunting.

In 20 years of advising these sorts of businesses on change and improvement there are some leadership lessons that seem to crop up time after time, in one form or another.

The survivors learn them, rarely an easy path, the others just go the way of the Dodo.

Management of people and their capabilities.

Successful leaders manage their people and their capabilities on an individual basis. When you have a bunch of people performing well and growing individually, you get  groups of them doing the same as the group, and then the enterprise benefits. For the person at the top of an enterprise, even if it is a small one, this aspect of managing cannot be left to chance. This is first on my list, as it is the most important by a long way.

Identifying the molehills early.

Every enterprise has more than its fair share of molehills that need attention, The challenge is to address them, smooth them out before they become mountains, or even little hills that get in the way of performance. The impact of even a tiny molehill on the performance of an enterprise is like the ripples in a pool when a rock is thrown in. They radiate out, and when meeting up with ripples from elsewhere, there is rough water. The job of everyone in a business  is to remove the molehills as they emerge, before any ripples can be sent out.

Get it right first time.

The fundamental lesson of ‘Lean’ can be summarised as getting it right first time, every time. While this is hard to achieve, but every corner that is cut, every expedient decision and compromise that is made, will come back to bite you hard, some time, in some way. Never settle for less than the absolute best that can be done, every time, and improve the processes that deliver that  outcome to increasingly demanding specifications, relentlessly.

Focus, Focus, Focus.

The 80/20 rule works every time in every circumstance I have ever seen. Do a limited range of things for those who really care, and do it better than anyone else. Anything else means you are compromising the things you do by spreading them too widely, and as a medium business, you simply cannot afford to do that. Be opportunistic only if it can be done from within the existing narrow definition of  what you are great at doing.

Team alignment.

Alignment has unfortunately become a bit of a consulting cliché, which must be some indication that it is right. Having everyone pulling on the same direction is essential, but you never get there without hard training and robust debate on the way through. The metaphor I always like is of a rowing eight. The best team always wins, but to get the best team in the boat on race day, and working in that absolutely coordinated way that seems so fluid and natural, is really hard, the result of training, mutual respect, and the subordination of the individual to the performance of the team.

Right, not popular.

It often happens that the right decision is not always the popular one. That is why business is  not a democracy, someone always holds the right of veto. It is the responsibility of that person to make the right decision, best made after robust debate amongst those affected, what I call ‘Due Process’. At the end of the debate, the leader has to make the call, and those who may not have agreed with the decision need to line up behind it and support it in every way. Any ongoing dissent needs to be behind closed doors, and between the parties involved only.

Humility and Agility.

Having made the point about right not popular, not every decision taken will be the right one, so the really good leaders amongst us moderate their right to the veto by  being able to acknowledge mistakes, change course and get on with it. Managers are usually loathe to admit they are wrong, as they consider that it shows weakness, the leaders amongst us know  that being able to admit they were wrong shows strength of character, which is what we follow.

Balance the competition between today and tomorrow.

Taking the short term easy route at the expense of the longer term good rarely pays off. The urgency of the immediate often outweighs the importance of getting the foundations right for tomorrow, and while doing so may make for an easier weekend, it usually makes for a crap year.

Write it down, and create a rhythm.

Documenting your plans makes them available to everyone else who needs to know, and provides the framework for decision making, without which, there can be no chance that everyone will be working off the same hymn sheet, another worthwhile cliché.

A really effective plan is a combination of a number of elements that add to the clarity of the plan, which makes it something that can be effectively implemented, managed and improved.

Your ‘why’ or business purpose, or Mission, however you choose to describe it will only evolve slowly over time.

Your strategy also evolves, but over a shorter period, a few years. it used to be that 5 years was a reasonable evolutionary period, but the speed and aggression of competitive pressures have shortened that to three in most cases.

Operating plans, usually called budgets are the financial expression of what you will and will not do over the next 12 months. Allowing the numbers to determine the activities is a common mistake. It is way better to manage activities by the objectives that need to be achieved and then measure the outcomes and adjust as necessary by the numbers. Having your sales, marketing, and operational plans in place that have been derived from a combination of the objectives and zero based budgeting , rather than fitting the activities to some vague notion of the acceptable cost, is the way it should be done.

Unless you measure the outcomes of what you are doing, you will have no idea of the effectiveness of your activities and investments. Having said that, you cannot measure everything, and trying to do so will tie you up in administration, and compromise the learning that comes from having a few key metrics where you understand clearly the cause and effect chains in place.

Learn and adjust. Plans that do not change in the face of contrary outcomes are worse than  no plans at all. Therefore your metrics need to drive adjustments in your activities and costs as you cycle through the year.

Someone is the driver.

That leader, the one with the veto, is the one doing the directing, the cox if you like in the  rowing eight metaphor. They are the ones with the overall view of the progress, both in the scull and across the competitive arena, and should be the one most sensitive to the changes necessary to achieve  the optimum return from the assets, financial and otherwise, invested.

When you, as the leader get all that stuff right, or close to it, the performance improvement will be considerable.

The 7 mental Models for successful marketing

The 7 mental Models for successful marketing

Jun 13, 2017 | Change, Governance, Marketing

Creating a successful marketing program is like putting together a 10,000 piece jigsaw, with two significant differences.

  • A jigsaw only goes together one way, every piece fits into its neighbours in a unique way, whereas a marketing program has an infinite number of ways of being put together.
  • When doing a jigsaw, you have the box it came in to give you a very clear and absolute picture of the outcome. Not so in marketing, and while we work hard at clarifying objectives, they are never as clear, and rich with detail as a picture.

Some weeks ago, I found myself in a huge toy store in western Sydney, doing the right grandfatherly thing on my way to get some ‘grandpappy’ time with my granddaughter, who is absolutely the most gorgeous thing God ever put breath into. I was confronted by isle after isle of toys, a vast array of options, no idea of what any of it was, all attractively packaged in adult proof packaging, each with claims to greatness and testimonials from auspicious sounding bodies.

This is not my area of expertise.

I asked a young woman looking after some stock who appeared knowledgeable for advice. She recommended a couple of things, one of which she personally guaranteed because her now 6 year old daughter had had the same one, and loved it absolutely, without reservation, and still played with it.

So I shelled out the required for this fancy looking thing with lots of colours, of course requiring a steady diet of batteries stored in a kid safe unit welded to the bottom, and wrapped it up for my  granddaughter.

A bit later after her mother had wielded the knife required to free this revelation from its adult proof packaging, Georgia was presented with this wonder toy.

She turned it over in her hands a few times, whacked it on the top, which did turn something on, that played a series of flashing lights, and a little tune, which enchanted her, for about 10 seconds. She then turned and toddled over to her seat in the corner mumbling mmmbbbbaaa, mmmbbbaa, which is code for ‘Blue Bear’, a tattered old blue of her fathers that had been rescued from a box in the roof of our place and cleaned up. She took ‘Blue Bear’ over to play with her new fancy, expensive shiny toy, then proceeded to fill her pants.

This experience struck me as an absolutely true metaphor for what we all do when confronted by all the tools, smoke mirrors  and bullshit that is sold as marketing by all sorts of shysters.

We chase the newest shiny thing, forgetting the old fashioned, basic building blocks that have worked for the last 100 years. We abandon them, in favour of the junk that delivers a short term buzz, but is long term just a waste of time and money in almost every case.

In an earlier post, I articulated my views of the 4 foundations of a brand, and used the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle to make my point. To follow up, I thought I would  give you some thoughts perhaps tools to help you sort the jigsaw pieces as you go about building your own marketing programs.

Let me put a stake in the ground.

Nothing about the strategic framework of marketing has changed in the last 100 years. We are still finding customers for our products, solving their problems, adding value to them, and trying to make a profit on the way through. Peter Drucker was right, ‘The sole purpose of a business is to find customers’

So, the strategic foundations of marketing have not changed, but the tactical end of marketing has changed radically.

To quote that well known marketing guru, Albert Einstein,  Everything should be made as simple as possible, no simpler’.

My goal is to give you a few Mental Models’ that might help sort out and simplify the enormous array of choices you face when building a marketing program that enable you to make better choices.

I have spoken about these 4 foundations in the past, so there is little point in repeating myself, apart from reminding you that foundations are just that, foundations, without which the building will fall, and that they are largely invisible from the outside.

Briefly, the foundations are:

Business Purpose. The Why, the story of the business. This drives everything else. The foundation of the foundations if you like.

Customers. Who is it you are seeking to engage to sell. This implies that you have said ‘No’ to a lot of potential but casual customers on whom you will not spend any resources.

Value proposition. What is it that you are doing for them that delivers value. What can you deliver that makes you different, and for them, the only choice.

Leverage. What enables you to leverage, amplify and deliver the value proposition. This is in effect your brand building  toolbox, and the exercise of the leverage comes from your revenue generation infrastructure, from which you will have to make a lot of choices.

Following are 7 models I use in the marketing planning process.

In addition there is a tube of glue, the stuff that holds it all together, and you must have the tube of glue to optimise all the effort put into the rest, irrespective of how much money you spend, how smart you are, or how good your product.

There are thousands of tools, the choice is mindboggling, and all claim in one way or another to make your life easier, more successful, and ultimately, make you rich.

However, beware the vendor who tries to sell you a solution that covers everything, there is  no such animal.

The toolbox is where the huge changes have come. From a few years ago where you had a limited number of choices and the times at which you interacted were also limited, the 6.30 news on TV, driving the car on the way home from work, to an infinite number of choices, all available 24/7.

How we reach and engage customers has changed radically, the fight to the death is now for our attention.

How do you choose your poison?

A year ago, Scott Brinker’s Martech landscape had 3,874 digital tools.

A staggering number, dwarfed by the 5,381 in the just released 2017 version, which I am sure was a redundant number the moment after he drew the line under the data.

When you consider this is only the digital tools available to the marketer, the size and complexity of the jigsaw we are dealing with is immense, and there is no silver bullet, so often promised, in sight.

Sorting the options is a complex task, made easier by using a few ‘Mental Models’, tools that make the sorting easier, or at least a bit more manageable.

The process.

A process is a series of steps that are repeatable, and able to be continuously improved.

You should have worked this process in this order, the why, followed by the value proposition, then the ideal customer profile, and then, it is time for the rubber to hit the road, enough of the nice words, how do you leverage the outcomes, how do you implement?

The point here is that most of the impact comes from the strategy development you do, that is 75% of the work, and is make or break. It is the important but not urgent stuff you have to do well, but often gets passed over in favour of the urgent but not important things that happen every day to distract you.

Responding to that Facebook notification makes little sense when your strategy is unclear. The only risk there is that you might miss a really interesting cat photo, get your strategy wrong, and you might lose your business.

The tactical decisions should take less time, are less critical, but usually consume all the money, and are more easily reversible.

The strategic decisions made should always, without exception, drive the tactical choices you make.

Take heed of Einstein’s words: , ‘If I had 1 hour to solve a life defining problem, the first 55 minutes I would spend defining the problem, the rest is just maths”

Play the Options game

Revenue generation, which is the term I now use to describe what used to be Marketing and Sales, on a limited budget, indeed any budget, is an options game.

When you look at it like an options game, you do the research, collect information, and only make a choice when you have to, when the option to delay the choice is no longer open.

This is not procrastination, quite the opposite, this is the process of actively making choices to achieve a specific outcome, using the best information you have to hand.

It is an active process, the decisions will not make themselves, it will not happen by osmosis, you must choose!

There is never enough budget to do all that you would like to do, therefore you have to make choices between a range of options.

While creating a plan, and picking the right tools is all about having a picture of the outcome you want, the completed jigsaw, it is also important not to be locked irrevocably into a course of action in the face of new data, changes in the market, or just common sense.

Therefore, play the options to achieve the outcomes you want. Do not rely on others to tell you what to do.

Do the research, seek information and intelligence, make sure you know enough to ask intelligent questions, and be able to see and smell bullshit when it is in front of you, as this part of commercial life is knee deep in it, and often it is made to smell remarkably fragrant, and sounds like the siren song, so it is buyer beware.

Acknowledge the ‘Journey’

Every purchase requires that the purchaser go through some sort of ‘journey’, from the point of recognition that a  purchase is necessary or desirable, to the transaction, and beyond. In a consumer purchase, this process may take a few milliseconds, but in a major purchase, and most particularly in a B2B purchase where others need to be involved, it can be a very long process, depending on the nature of the purchase.

A customers journey begins with some awareness of a problem, followed by some level of research, it may be looking at supplier sites, forums, checking your friends, seeking ideas and specifications.

A short list will be prepared, even if it is casual, then more research will happen, web rooming, demonstration, followed by a decision to buy, then the transaction and after sales services and expectations.

This will vary in every case, the point is that in the past, the only access to the information was either the advertising or the retailers, so very early on the seller knew you were in the market, they could feed you the information, not necessarily for your best interests, but for theirs.

Not so now, you can be at the point of ordering before the seller has any idea you are there.

At the time the potential customer is moving through the process, the potential supplier, not knowing who they are, or where they are, needs to be able to engage in some way, to provide the information and advice they need, answer their questions, get onto the short list, become the chosen supplier.

The buyer has all the power, they no longer need the seller for anything other than the final transaction, everything else they may need is available to them, so the challenge of the marketer is to be in the place where the buyer goes looking for information, reassurance, and answers the questions they have progressively in a manner that reflects the buyers journey.

Usually you will see this in some sort of pyramid, with lead, prospect, hot prospect, customer, or words to that effect. This can be misleading unless seen in the context of the parallel processes.

Customers do not move down the traditional sales funnel by osmosis, or gravity, they move down because you lead them down, even when in most cases you will not be aware of their journey.

Communication choices.

Bringing this all together is communication, by whichever means you choose from the huge menu available.

Communication is the means by which everything happens.

It is where you decide just how you are going to interact with this ideal customer as they move through their considerations.

There are 4 types of communication channel, Owned, Rented, Paid and Earned media.

You can pick any combination and ratio of the four, there are no other options, but within each there are multitudes of options, both digital and analogue.

  • Owned is yours, your website, newsletter, you own it, you can do with it what you like.
  • Paid media is pretty obviously advertising, digital and/or analogue, with a huge number of options.
  • Rented is your space on social media platforms, you are renting the space in return for your information that the platform owner uses to sell advertising.
  • Earned media is the good stuff, the referrals, links and backlinks. I do not include likes, as it is just too easy, there is no skin in the game, but to write a comment or explicitly share takes some effort.

There are multitudes of options, clearly understanding the habits and behaviour of your ideal customer is essential to be able to mix the communication so that it is seen at the right time in the customers journey.

Focus only on the bits that deliver the value

The genius of Vilfredo Pareto, the 15th century Italian mathematician who first articulated what we call the 80/20 rule is working all over the place if we care to look.

Focussing attention on the few things that deliver results and ignoring the rest is a hugely sensible but usually a very difficult thing to achieve.

You will absolutely find that 20% of your customers deliver 80% of your sales and profits.

That does not mean you do not need the other 80%,  but it does mean that resources you allocate to them would be better used elsewhere.

It works everywhere.

This mental model should feed your deliberations in every decision you make, every action you take.

Differentiation

When all else is equal, all you have is price, and then it is a race to the bottom, and the greatest risk in a race to the bottom is that you might win.

Seth Godin’s metaphor of the Purple cow is well known, but the Zebra’s arse makes a better picture to make the point.

Differentiate on every parameter that is valuable to your ideal customer.

However, differentiation for the sake of being different, that adds no value to a customer is just a waste of money and effort, but make that differentiation valuable, and the investment will deliver handsome rewards.

 

Correlation does not mean Causation

I would never own a Labrador.

They are lovely, friendly, trainable dogs, great with kids, but they send you blind.

It is obvious, how many times have you seen a blind person with a Labrador? Obviously there is a very high chance that labs cause blindness.

Oh!! Perhaps it is our old mate correlation, not cause and effect.

A while ago a client launched a new FMCG product, and it worked pretty well on a limited budget, which was largely directed to digital advertising.

The agency crowed about how great their creative was, how effective the ad placement had been, obviously it had been, as the product was a success, despite me being very sceptical about the value of many forms of digital advertising.

However, I did point out that the efforts of the marketing people to identify a hole in the current offerings that left a group of consumers underserviced, the sales force in getting good distribution against the odds had helped, as had the promotional program, and the in store tasting programs that got the stuff onto people’s mouths, pretty important with a food product. Nevertheless, the cocks crowed loudly and often, claiming cause and effect where only correlation existed.

So, there are the 7 mental models I wanted to share. That just leaves the glue that holds it all together.

The Glue!

Human beings relate to stories.

They do  not absorb written information very well, visual information is much better, but stories are the core of everything.

We evolved as a species telling stories, to keep safe, remember generationally where the food was, what to look out for, and so on.

What is your story?

You need to tell one, but tell it with a point.

Telling a story without a context, without a point, is not memorable, but tell a story well, that has a point, and you have them.

All the tools around, the thousands of them are no more than leverage for your story, your purpose, your why.

So, figure out the story of your brand, your business, and tell it consistently, and well, with the point.

Your elevator pitch is a story in 20 seconds, your logo encompasses the story, somehow, every piece of marketing collateral must communicate a part of the story, so that eventually, the parts add up to greater than the sum of all those parts.

Ever heard the parable of the frog and the scorpion?

The tortoise and the hare, the three little pigs, Adam & Eve, and so on.

They are all stories with a point, we remember the stories, so we remember the point.

When you want to know how to deliver a story, watch great comedians, they are the modern story telling masters.

 

For a verbal version of this post, recorded live to an industry group, Click here.

2017 Internet trends report by Mary Meeker at KPCB

2017 Internet trends report by Mary Meeker at KPCB

Jun 4, 2017 | Governance, Leadership, Strategy

Since 2001 Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers has released a report on the technical and behavioural trends driving the internet, compiled by Mary Meeker. It has become the bible of everyone associated in any way with the net as a generator of revenue and value.

The 2017 report was released at the annual Code conference on May 31.

The amount of work required to assemble this bible must be humongous, then it is given away as a contribution to the development of the industry where KPCP operates.

It is to my mind one of the greatest pieces of content marketing we will ever see.

Making any attempt to summarise the powerpoint summary of the report would be disingenuous, I recommend you flick through the slides, all 355 of them in the report and consider the implications for your business.

 

 

The most important lesson from writing 1,500 blog posts

The most important lesson from writing 1,500 blog posts

Jun 2, 2017 | Governance, Marketing, Strategy

This is the 1,500th post on the StrategyAudit site, and the journey has been a surprising one.

I am  not a writer, I stumbled into blogging as a way to market my services as a consultant.

However, it has become way more than that.

Writing a blog, particularly when the commitment is 3 posts a week, is about self-discovery.

When I started I never realised how much I did not know, but was curious to find out.

Writing has humbled me, as I struggle to form views on topics, and then articulate them in ways that convey the meaning as I intend.

That sentence is full of traps, all of which I run into regularly.

It is also why some themes keep on cropping up, I see or hear something that adds to the understanding I have, it puts a different spin on something that leads to a different outcome in differing contexts, asks a question in a different way.

Writing also removes the requirement that people be mind-readers.

No longer do they have to interpret body language and gestures, or  read between the lines of a  mangled verbal explanation, and generally guess what it is I am getting at.

Writing forces improved communication, and clarity of thought and conclusion. It forces the distinction between correlation and causality, and demands a sufficiently deep analysis of problems to expose the root causes rather than just seeing the symptoms.

Writing also exposes mercilessly any failings of logic and common sense.

A gratifying number of people have read, commented and shared my various musings over the 1,500 posts, but the  one who has benefited most is me.

So, thank you for being a part of the process, and spending your valuable time engaging with me on the journey of discovery.

A particular thanks to those who have been my clients, as most of the writing has come from you in one way or another, combined with the collected wisdom now at our fingertips, should we take the time and make the effort to sort it all out from the self-interested crap and cat photos that infest the web.

Finally, at the core of why I do this is the basic observation that if I give you a widget, I do not  have it any more, but if I give you an idea, we both have it.

We have a way to go yet.