mark.drechsler

The IT project governance group – kickstarting Agile behaviour change in a Digital Workplace project

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I scared an Agile coach this week.

I’ve recently taken on a project role as Product Owner for an IT project we’re calling the Digital Workplace project, which aims to more effectively leverage several collaboration technologies (such as live chat, document sharing/collaboration and project planning/management) across the professional services teams at the University. Although I’ve called it an IT project, there’s really very little new technology in it, and it should really be called a behaviour change project underpinned by accelerated technology adoption – or something. In fact, all three likely tech tools involved are already available to all staff, it’s just that very few people actually use them.

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Farewelling my smartwatch – a tale of data value

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I stopped wearing my smartwatch this week.

Or, to be more accurate, I stopped wearing the latest smartwatch that I have been wearing. I started off with a Fitbit Charge HR (arguably not a smartwatch, I’ll give you that) until that fell to pieces, then moved on to a Sony Smartwatch 3, and then had a brief dalliance with a borrowed Ticwatch S. They now all sit abandoned while I toy with the idea of putting them on eBay, taking them to bits or strapping them to the dog while I’m at work to see just how active he isn’t during the day (greyhounds are good like that).

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Empathy, empowerment and expectation in customer service culture

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I left my Local Bike Shop (LBS) today.

It wasn’t an easy decision, but it was the right one, even after having bought my previous three bikes from there (the first back in 2010) as well as one for my Dad and two for my partner, as well as having them do plenty of servicing and repair work for me over the years. I’ll leave out the reasons I left my former LBS other than to say that a recent interaction left me feeling very dissatisfied as a long-term customer.

Don’t shove things into your spokes people, nobody wins

What I do want to focus on though is why I chose my new one out of two potential options, and why this is important for service organisations in an increasingly depersonalised world. It was all to do with the willingness to think beyond an initial problem and work out a creative solution, to use empathy, and to try and think of things that could be done rather than things that couldn’t.

In short, it was all about empathy, empowerment and expectation.

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My writer’s block (aka Life at Flinders – three years on)

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Roadblock - https://flic.kr/p/fxFVgnI’ve really struggled to write for the last six months. Whilst looking at my blog from an outsiders perspective there’s a big gap between this post and the last one way back in September, what you don’t see is the handful of post ‘stubs’ that will probably forever remain unpublished that sit in my WordPress drafts, nor do you see the flickers of ideas that have popped into my head that have never even made it that far. This post attempts to understand why – and how it relates to my third year at Flinders.

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How to nail a job interview… using ESP

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Interviews There are countless job interview sites out there aimed at helping prospective employees put their best foot forward in an interview situation. Most offer quite similar advice: Research the company and role. Arrive early. Know how to respond to behavioural questions using the CAR method. Dress to impress (whatever that means). Be prepared on how to answer some common questions.

It’s this last one that frustrates me. Not because it is bad advice (it is always a good idea to be able to answer ‘what is your greatest weakness’ with something a little more interesting than ‘I’m a perfectionist’), but because it is incomplete. Think of this advice as the equivalent of advising a student to prepare solely for an exam by rote learning the answers to the exams from the last couple of years, rather than getting them to focus on understanding the subject matter.

What I want to share is a quick technique which provides a more robust way of being prepared to respond to interview questions, and it is something I’ve picked up from watching, of all people, politicians.

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