Most organisations are grappling with this new thing called ‘digital’. But what does ‘digital’ actually mean? Is it rebuilding a website? Is it making a first foray into the scary world of social media? Is it arming all of your executives with iPhones? Before rushing headlong into ‘going digital’, it’s probably a good first step…
Month: March 2016
A Comparative Analysis of Two Public Library Websites
In my capacity as the digital strategist at Public Libraries South Australia (PLS), I was lucky enough to visit the Yarra Plenty Regional Library (YPRL) service when I was in Melbourne a couple of weeks back – thanks to Anita, Marcus and Felicity for spending some time with me. The YPRL service operates nine public…
Hey Wehner boy!
A bloke with a surname like mine was never meant to be in the military. Go on, dream up any nickname relating to sausages or the male appendage and I’m betting that I’ve been called that name at some stage of my military career. In the Army, one’s surname is prominently displayed on the chest in bold, capital letters…
Australian companies doing business in Indonesia: A cross-cultural analysis using Hofstede’s Six Dimensions of National Cultures Model
This was an essay that I submitted for MBA unit ‘Managing in a Global Context’. The assignment was to produce a recommendations report for an Australian business (in this case a fictional one) seeking to enter an overseas market, using academic cultural frameworks (I’ve used Geert Hofstede’s Six Dimensions of National Cultures).
Don’t hire a digital person unless they can pass this test
Organisations are increasingly going to market to hire ‘digital specialists’, ‘digital project managers, ‘digital strategists’ and ‘digital marketers’. I monitor the job advertisements in my home town of Adelaide and it is clear that jobs with ‘digital’ in the title are increasing significantly. Digital is a relatively new thing. The problem is that anybody who has…
Atlassian: a sustaining organisation
This is a minor paper that I submitted for my MBA unit ‘Fundamentals of Leadership’ back in late 2014. We were required to write about a ‘sustaining corporation’. I chose Australian information technology success story Atlassian, a company that has recently listed on the New York Stock Exchange (the paper was written well before this). If…
The ‘ping’ of email, dopamine and mindfulness
This week our MBA mindfulness exercise was to monitor our emotional reaction to email arriving in our inbox. The idea was to classify each arrival into three categories: pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, and to identify the body’s sensations at the precise moment the email is received. This was always going to be hard job for…