values

Every organisation is ‘for-profit’

What’s the fundamental difference between a for-profit organisation, and a not-for-profit one? Or, for that matter, between either of those and, say, a government department, or an NGO (non-governmental organisation)? Short answer: none – because every organisation is a for-profit organisation. The only difference between…

Costs of acquisition, retention, de-acquisition

How much does it cost to acquire a customer? To retain a customer? To lose a customer? And in what sense of ‘cost’? In part this one was triggered by reading through my relatively-new copy of Business Model You, and reflecting on…

Services, customers and citizens

If we provide a service that is a monopoly or natural-monopoly, how should we relate with those who use our services? What’s the most appropriate metaphor to use, to guide our decision-making? I’ve been thinking hard about this for quite a while…

Four principles for a sane society: an addendum

What architectures do we need for a society and economics that’d be viable and sustainable over the longer term? And how do we scale that down to the the everyday work we do at present in enterprise-architectures and the like? In the…

Four principles for a sane society: Summary

How do we make sense of the big-picture in enterprise-architecture? The really big-picture? For those who didn’t (or couldn’t!) read the full series, here’s a (shortish) summary of each of those (rather over-long) posts… From the Introduction Part of the work I’ve been doing at…

Four principles – 4: Adaptability is everything

How do we work with change – and, especially, extreme-change – in an enterprise-architecture? At the really big-picture scale? This is the fifth in a series of posts on principles for a sane society: Four principles for a sane society: Introduction Four principles: #1: There are…

Four principles – 3: Money doesn’t matter

What’s the real role of money within design for an enterprise-architecture? At the really big-picture scale? [Apologies, folks: this one's turned out to be really long, even by my usual standards - but unfortunately this theme is so darn controversial that it really does need the depth of…

Four principles – 2: There are no rights

What rights do we need to design for in enterprise-architecture? At the really big-picture scale? This is the third in a series of posts on principles for a sane society: Four principles for a sane society: Introduction Four principles: #1: There are no rules – only…

Four principles – 1: There are no rules

What rules do we need in enterprise-architecture? At the really big-picture scale? This is the second in a series of posts on principles for a sane society: Four principles for a sane society: Introduction Four principles: #1: There are no rules – only guidelines Four…

Four principles for a sane society

How do we make sense of the big-picture in enterprise-architecture? The really big-picture? Yep, it’s that time of year again: the lead-up to the annual Integrated EA conference, where they allow me to go somewhat off-the-wall and present the current ‘big-idea’ that I’m…

“Science, which is a belief-system”

A fascinating throw-away line in an article on the BBC website today, ‘Arizona: Naming the dead from the desert‘: The forensic scientists and I have a lot of faith in science, which is a belief system. It requires trust in officials, in…

Enterprise-architecture and organisational health

My mother is a retired general-practitioner (family doctor), and still has the BMJ (British Medical Journal) delivered here each week. It’s always a useful contrast to my ‘day-job’ in enterprise-architecture, and every-now-and-then there’s a real jewel of an article there that reflects…
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