I’ve made no secret of the fact that I hate the term Millennial. I’m technically a Millennial by most measures so it cuts close to home when I see how most publications use the term. If you took a poll, I think you’d see the terms most closely tied to the word as: Entitled Lazy…
What works for a population may not work for an individual, and vice versa. #WorkplaceWednesday
It seems obvious that the solutions we apply to populations are different than those we apply to individuals. There are plenty of individuals who can safely travel at greater than the posted speed limit but the population, generally, would be less safe if everyone could. Everyone believes themselves to be the individual who can safely…
Musings on the nature of dashboards….
I’ve been intimately involved in the creation and dissemination of hundreds, if not thousands, of dashboards over the past decade. Four years ago, I even wrote my most viewed piece ever (not posted here, I put it on Medium for some reason): Value from Dashboards…the real story. That post has been read thousands of times…
It shouldn’t be about being right….
Being right makes our egos feel good. When you are proven right, a rush of endorphins comes in to make you love the feeling. The world suddenly thinks you are the best. You think you are the best. The problem with being right is that it means someone else is wrong. Right and wrong is…
Understanding someone else’s response to change is complex.
We all have to deal with change as part of what we do. But as with so many things we all deal with, change comes in waves. There are periods of greater change which increases our sensitivity to it, and periods where it’s lower where we almost longingly look forward to something a little different….
Primary data versus secondary data.
I deal heavily with workplace sensor technology. This is the tech where a sensor is placed under a desk or in a room that can tell you if space is occupied or not. Basically, it reports a 1 if it detects new occupancy and a 0 if that occupant leaves. Pretty straightforward. From a primary…
There’s a big difference between good data and interesting data.
Good data is often very boring. It contains the basics and comes in as expected (right format, schedule, completeness). There are lots of things we can do with good data in order to move the ball forward. Interesting data is never boring. It contains interesting attributes and never-before-seen elements. Usually it comes in as a…
Fact, opinion, and interpretation should fall into very different communication streams.
Fake news continues to be the pop culture rage. People on the left and right point to articles that don’t match their side of the story and exclaim the downfall of the Press. Somehow they all want to ignore a fact that has been around since (at least) the 80s: most news is opinion, not…
Troubleshooting isn’t only for technology things
One of the hardest parts of any project is getting the Quality Assurance aspects right. How do you really QA a consulting report or check a research report? Troubleshooting non-procedural activities is a fundamental issue. The problem is, troubleshooting non-technology activities is more important than doing so in technology. Once a system is set up,…
3 layers of #CRE data. Who is your real customer? Who is your partner’s real customer?
The internet has made the service provider world very different. An amazing number of new business models have come to life that can provide an amazing amount of value if you think through your needs correctly. Being in the commercial real estate industry, this is particularly true. Data has taken over most industries as the…