Category: Services & Products

You probably read this quote by William Arthur Ward before – “The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”

Roll back to year 1995, many companies complained World Wide Web was just a waste of time. Some companies expects better, more secure technology would replace it, and only a few companies really invested resources to try it.

Roll forward to year 2010, many companies complained Cloud Computing was just a fab. Some companies expects better, more secure technology would beat it, and only a few companies changed direction to deploy it.

And now in year 2021, what is the “wind” in your industry ? And do you know which way you want to go, and what action will take you there ?

Even though people don’t mind online meetings, but I guess most prefer in-person meetings because likely there will be less distractions, and one can read body language, use context clues, as well as build better team …. if one runs it effectively.

However, there must be ways to improve online meetings, followings are tools I tried in various online meetings:

1. Brightful.me to warm up the meeting with mini-games;
2. Sli.do to let the team to ask questions;
3. Ahaslides.com to create polls with interesting ways to present the results; 
4. Mentimeter.com to create polls and present the results in impressive infographics.
5. Prezi.com/video/ to add graphic overlay to your video calls

Any other good tools and tricks you would recommend to improve online meetings ?

I was asked once, “You’re a smart man, why haven’t you exploited your data ?”

I replied, “Not sure I’m smart but of course we make good use of our data. By the way, you too have lots of data, why aren’t you smart ?”

For those who believe by having lots of data, the company will automatically get a lot smarter … I would suggest all to read the book – “The Data Detective” by Tim Harford. This book gifts us 10 rules of thumb for thinking about reported data.

All 10 rules are useful, but Rule #6 – “Ask Who Is Missing” and #7 -“Demand Transparency When the Computer Says No” are must read … as these two chapters tell a lot about how to avoid big data traps.

Don’t miss it, if you want to be smart in data.

Amazon Link : https://amzn.to/3h4pj1m

What’s your company’s signature product ?

Are you in the product business, or in the people business ? Who are you serving, day in day out ?

Good software, like wine, takes time.

But of course, other than time good software also takes lots of proper testing. Therefore I always puzzle why companies spend so little resources in professional testing, and then rely on business users (or even customers) to do casual / incomplete testing.

If you’re going to roll out a product, be sure to involve good software testers … as they are the unsung heros of the software development lifecycle.