Does Management Matter?

A recent news story of how the on-line shoe company Zappos has eliminated the position of manager has raised again the question of whether management matters. A new Harvard Business Review article says “yes,” and they have the data to prove it. The Zappos story about eliminating traditional managers has an exciting air to it.Read… Read more »

RTFM

More than 90% of people don’t know about CTRL- or CMD- F… http://t.co/wDhRUVa4IF — Neil Williams (@neillyneil) December 2, 2013 My first computer came with a big solid manual. In fact it came with two, one for MS-DOS, the operating system, and one for BASIC. The first – and for a long time only –Read… Read more »

RTFM

More than 90% of people don’t know about CTRL- or CMD- F…http://t.co/wDhRUVa4IF — Neil Williams (@neillyneil) December 2, 2013 My first computer came with a big solid manual. In fact it came with two, one for MS-DOS, the operating system, and one for BASIC. The first – and for a long time only – softwareRead… Read more »

Better blogging: separate writing and publishing?

I wonder if one way of helping the process of blogging is to separate the tools you use for writing and for publishing. Here’s what I mean – when I use WordPress’ editor to compose a post from scratch, I am using the same software to write my content and to publish it. I haveRead… Read more »

Rethinking government IT to support the changing needs of government

We recently saw a change in the federal government in Australia, with a corresponding reorganisation of agency priorities and structures. Some departments ceased to exist (such as Department of Regional Australia), others split (DEEWR into two departments, Education and Employment) and still others had parts ‘broken off’ and moved elsewhere (Health and Ageing, which lostRead… Read more »

Resources for Developing your 3D Engineering Skills

If you’ve been paying any attention to the Every Day Counts website, you might have noticed that 3D Engineered Models are now being promoted by the Every Day Counts program. This is because of the potential for this type of technology to cost effectively accelerate construction. However, in addition to this, 3D engineered models offerRead… Read more »

The Expertise Strikes Back

Tom Nichols writes of the death of expertise in a recent, well-received blog. When he first tweeted a reference to the topic, as he was writing it, I immediately thought he was referring to Cognitive Resource Theory (CRT) – the finding that expertise is essential in high-stress decision environments, but less so in low-stress decisionRead… Read more »