by Benjamin Ellis | Feb 7, 2013 | Management, Milestone Planner
More and more of the conversations we are having with Milestone Planner users are about the challenges of matrix working. The formal definition of a matrix is anywhere there are dual reporting lines i.e. people have more than one formal boss. Almost anyone using...
by Benjamin Ellis | Nov 2, 2012 | Event, Productivity
I had the pleasure of listening to Khoi Tu talk about teams at the RSA in London. Khoi’s slogan is: “building a better world, one team at a time.” – which resonated with much of what we are trying to do here. His talk draws from his book:...
by Benjamin Ellis | Oct 12, 2012 | Milestone Planner
As well as improved invite and sharing functions, the latest release of Milestone Planner re-introduces a new and improved “repeat” function, closing the loop between emergent planning (see “building a plan”) and repeatable processes....
by Benjamin Ellis | Oct 2, 2012 | Event, Management
Although I didn’t physically manage to get to #mindtheproduct2012, I did get to enjoy the tweetstream, mainly thanks to the tweets of @welovelean and @mindtheproduct (the latter under the prolific fingertips of James Mayes). If you are, or aspire to be, a...
by Benjamin Ellis | Sep 13, 2012 | Leadership, Management
Earlier in the year I spoke at an event for the Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN), and some recent discussions have caused me to reflect again on how social technologies are fundamentally altering the way we do business. A study by IBM, that...
by Benjamin Ellis | Sep 3, 2012 | Milestone Planner
We’ve been inspired by the sporting, and put on a bit of a sprint with a number of updates to Milestone Planner over the last few days. They are all aimed at making it simpler, faster, and easier to use. And, in a retro-chic move, there are also improvements for...
by Benjamin Ellis | Jul 30, 2012 | Cloud Computing
This spoof video, via satire site “The Onion” sums up much of what is going wrong with Cloud, and the marketing of Cloud-based apps, at the moment: You made need to click here to watch the video: HP cloud Video (The Onion) “Cloud” has become...
by Benjamin Ellis | Jul 16, 2012 | Management, Productivity
I was saddened to learn today of Stephen Covey’s death, at the age of 79, following an previous cycling accident. I had drafted this post over the weekend, and it seems fitting to post it as a tribute; our thoughts are with his friends and family. Stephen Covey...
by Benjamin Ellis | Jun 14, 2012 | Milestone Planner
The latest release of Milestone Planner is now live. While the timeline page remains the same, we have completely rewritten the rest of the application from the ground up. We have introduced a number of new features already, but most importantly, the new structure...
by Benjamin Ellis | May 30, 2012 | Productivity
These are my (live) notes from Tom Chatfield’s (@TomChatfield) talk at Thinking Digital 2012. As Tom started to talk, my ears pricked up and I thought this would be interesting to many of you. The following are Tom’s thoughts (which I strongly agree with):...
by Benjamin Ellis | May 28, 2012 | Event, Leadership, On the road
With thanks to The Big Partnership, this is their interview with me, just after I stepped off of the stage at the 2010 Like Minds event in Exeter. In short: We don’t know what we don’t know! Many businesses are obsessed with information technology....
by Benjamin Ellis | Apr 20, 2012 | Knowledge Work, Leadership, Management, Milestone Planner, Project Management
Look at pretty much any job specification for a project manager and you will see (in the UK at least) a requirement that candidates are PRINCE2 certified. For those not familiar with it, PRINCE2 is a UK government endorsed, project management methodology. It stands...
by Benjamin Ellis | Apr 17, 2012 | Management, Milestone Planner
We often blog about Milestone Planner as a commitment tracker:- what have I committed to do for who… But it seems the right time to talk a bit more about management by commitments. It’s not a well known concept, but in the places that I’ve seen it...
by Benjamin Ellis | Mar 28, 2012 | Knowledge Work, Leadership, Milestone Planner, Productivity
One of the phrases that sticks in my mind from the Internal Communications panel session at Social Media World Forum was from Andrew Barendrecht. Andrew talked about social in a business as a “Structured Revolution”. As a Collaboration Strategist at Apache...
by Benjamin Ellis | Mar 22, 2012 | Milestone Planner, On the road, Productivity
During the recent Social Media Week London, I had the privilege of chairing a session on psychology. The silent revolution behind social media has been to create an environment where there is more data about what we are doing, where we are doing it and who we are...
