Stream of Consciousness
Why stories are important I often wonder what makes stories so powerful. Most of the successful business presentations I see are based on powerful underlying stories. The best presenters, be it in the boardroom or in front of a large audience, are able to entice their listeners into entering a
Stream of Consciousness
Difficulties in regulatory compliance Some regulations are notoriously difficult to ensure compliance with. Take speed limits for example. Few people will, when confronted with an empty or almost empty road, stick to the speed limits as indicated and “enforced”. Unless you are unlucky or not aware of where fixed and
Stream of Consciousness
Informal networks are competing with established business structures The cost of informal networks getting together, creating something and then splitting apart again has gone down considerably because of the internet and the collaborative and co-creation tools it now offers to these organizations. The economies of scale which once heralded the
Stream of Consciousness
Context There is discussion ongoing at the Belgian federal government level about the (minimal) independence requirements for internal auditors active the Belgian federal administrations. I want to weigh in with some thoughts on that. This article is partly based on a recent position paper by the IIA on independence and
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Matthew Leitch has posted an interesting article on what integrated risk management actually means on his site, here. This analysis is based on a survey he executed and I participated in. As usual, his methodology as well as the scope of his analysis is well defined and well executed. I
Stream of Consciousness
The focus of reengineering and process optimization Many organizations have invested significant time and means in internal process optimization. Often for all the right reasons, such as performance improvements which were essential and reduced organisational bloat. Occasionally for the wrong reasons, such as the reaction the stock market will have
Stream of Consciousness
Listening to a recent back to work here and Merlin Mann’s comments on slides, I started thinking: “If we don’t use slideware to tell stories to children, why do we insist on beating to death adults with PowerPoint presentations when in essence we are doing the same thing:
Stream of Consciousness
Process waste management Recently I came across an article on David Allen’s GTD Connect site. In essence, what David was talking about was the need to perform regular waste management tasks on personal processes. Quite often a process that served a specific purpose in a specific context no longer
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The origins of management consulting After a slow start in the 19th century, management consulting came into its own during the Great Recession, in the early 1930’s. If you want to read more about the dynamics behind the growth of the profession, there are worse papers to read than
Stream of Consciousness
What is the Gruber-Mann Theorem? I’m again returning to the excellent talk Merlin Mann and John Gruber gave in 2009 at the famous South by SouthWest conference (SxSW). In their talk, they defined by means of a simple formula the key requirements for consistent delivery of quality work. It
Stream of Consciousness
Subjectivity is all around us Any evaluation, however objective you want it to be, is necessarily subjective. Just read some of Nassim Nicolas Taleb’s books which provide ample illustration of how easily we start to act based on subjective assessments. Now, contrast this to new risk management methodologies and
Stream of Consciousness
Why use categories? A way of structuring a risk identification model is by using categories. A category is a risk cluster which clusters risks according to area of (possible) occurrence. I use the following three categories, and do further clustering within a category according to types (a post on this