2014: Kaizen and continuous improvement

Rather than my standard resolutions, trying to be a little smarter this year about improving things gradually.

I’ve always been a bit too fond of grand new year resolutions, which basically mean I’m setting myself up with concrete targets I fail to meet exactly, and promptly abandon entirely.

This year, inspired from working around too many people doing agile, I’ve gone for a simpler take and I’m aiming for Kaizen – “continuous improvement”. Now I’ll admit that I’m bastardising the word horribly, but my resolution is just to do things that make stuff better, even if they seem small.

Right now at every gym in the country, a horde of marauding resolutioners are desperately striving to get to the gym 3 times a week. But they’re going at peak times, at the peak-time of the year, and they’ll fail because they’re going to a horrible room at its worst. It’s way less exciting to say “I’m going to go once or twice a week”, getting into the habit, and then working up; but that doesn’t give you the immediate achievement hit that misguided over-ambition does.

The hard truth is you really need to start in March when it’s a bit calmer and you’re not frustrated you can’t get any weights or machines. Come next year you’ll be so versed in knowing when and how to ask with non-verbal communication “how many sets left?” and “can we swap?” ; then you’ll be able to cope with the January hordes.

Team GB’s cycling squad were aiming for marginal gains, 1% here, 1% there – combining to something material, that material being Gold. Sure go for big wins too; but start the ball rolling with the small changes, and that 5% of improvement will put you in the place to tackle the 20% that you know will really take commitment.

The other important thing is that Kaizen addresses entire systems, not just individual items. If a car-plant repeatedly fails assembly because components are too variable – then the components are sourced with better reliability. You can’t fix it on the production line if it arrived broken.

You’re not a car plant, but you’re part of a system. Your friends that you choose to spend time with, your activities you do and where you do them. They’re all things that can be tuned a little, not just the things you directly do.

Happy 2014 everyone, and I hope it’s a one filled with many, small, incremental improvements.

Google makes VM Immortal – but how useful?

Google let you migrate machines between data-centres while they still run

While it’s a nice feature, and something that VMWare has been able to do for a while – But I can’t help feeling it’s an anti-pattern in cloud-infrastructures. Yes there are some applications that you can’t easily design as message consuming stateless data-beasts – in general to take advantage of scaling (for capacity or to money), you need to design your applications so that they can survive machine failure, be it from chaos monkey or otherwise.

Goodbye TVC

On the day TVC closes for general operation, a little on the past and future of this unique building.

TVC

Disclosure: I’ve worked on-and-off for various bits of BBC for many years.

The closure of TVC is one of those left-brain/right-brain things: The logical “right-brain” spreadsheet lover in me looks at the old building, the amount of asbestos, the legacy cables and the fact that News, Sport & Childrens have all moved out and thinks that it’s the right thing to do.

Meanwhile the left-brain in me is screaming loudly “BUT IT’S TELEVISION CENTRE”, it’s a place of dreams, of wonder, where I was in a small room in the basement while they filmed Jools Holland above. A place I got lost deliberately at lunchtime just so that I wouldn’t get lost that one time I was running for a meeting.

The truth probably lies somewhere in-between; News being in West1, unified with world-service is a great thing for the output. BBC Worldwide and BBC Studios will be moving back in a few years. Studios 1-3 will survive.

So on this, the last day the building is still in general operation, I will think fondly of the past, and hope that post re-fit the building emerges leaner and all set for 21st century.

My friend wrote about his recreation of a famous moment: On Tap-Dancing at TVC.

A Tale of Two CEOs

Ignoring potential risks doesn’t seem to pay off. The eerily similar tale of two failing companies.

When I read about the demise of HMV, there was a quote from here that rang a bell:

The relevant chart went up and I said, “The three greatest threats to HMV are, online retailers, downloadable music and supermarkets discounting loss leader product”. Suddenly I realised the MD had stopped the meeting and was visibly angry. “I have never heard such rubbish”, he said, “I accept that supermarkets are a thorn in our side but not for the serious music, games or film buyer and as for the other two, I don’t ever see them being a real threat, downloadable music is just a fad and people will always want the atmosphere and experience of a music store rather than online shopping”.

Sounded eerily familiar, and then I managed to find it:

I outlined to the Fairfax board what I described as a ‘catastrophe scenario’, which involved losing a decent chunk of their classified advertising, and they chose to totally ignore that. Roger Corbett, who was then a board member and is now the chairman of the company, he stood up at the front of the board table and he picked up a quite fat edition of the Saturday Sydney Morning Herald that was sitting there. And he held it up in front of the board members and he said to them, ‘I don’t want anyone ever coming into this boardroom again telling us that people will buy cars or houses or look for jobs without this.’ And he thumped the big fat Saturday Sydney Morning Herald on the board table.

Two companies, major problems, the same root-cause. You can’t always ignore problems in the hope that they go away or don’t materialise.

Avoiding the Barclays Cycle Hire Price Hike

Barclays Cycle Hire goes up in price in January 2013, here’s your options for a little more time at the old price…

Prices for annual subscription doubling in January 2012, and you can’t renew your membership to add on to the end of it… here are your two approaches:

You have a different credit/debit card and a second email address?

  1. Register a new key with an annual access period, which you don’t activate with a different email and card number.
  2. Put this away in drawer
  3. Turn off auto-renew on your existing key
  4. when access stops working use the other key

you don’t have an extra card lying around

This was given to me by the call-centre

  1. Cancel your existing access period, forfeiting what is left on it
  2. Get another annual period for 45 quid

Dear London

Getting into the spirit of the Olympics

You were amazing. We realise that now. You hosted athletes from all over the world, put on a cracking Olympics, and did it without too many transport dramas.

We realised we can win when we drive ourselves as a country, we’ve got a shedload of gold medals, and countless more silver and bronzes. Our cyclists showed the world what meticulous attention to every detail can achieve. Don’t ever say we don’t make things anymore: we made amazing bikes, bikes that made champions.

We walked past the amazing beach volleyball venue at horse-guards and were warmed on spring nights by the cheering of hundreds of spectators.

We struggled past That Damn Website trying to get tickets, and when did get into the park the organisation was top-notch, the food was ok, and people smiled.

And we smiled when we left. We smiled at tourists. We smiled at the pink signs everywhere when we realised that the city wasn’t in meltdown. We yelled “GET IN” in public when we won things. We smiled watching our city on the TV hosting the marathons and triathlons.

So my plea, can we carry on smiling?

We’re one of only a few cities in the world that is truly global, and for these 2 and a bit weeks we’ve been even more-so.

London, you’re harsh, noisy, grimy – a big city with character, that’s the way it will always be.

But please, at least for a bit after the Olympics and Paralympics, can we keep on smiling?

The New ITV News

ITV News relaunch shows that less can be more.

itv.com/news relaunched this week. It’s now all of ITV, and not just the ITN national bulletins. It’s very nice. Lots of people have been talking about it. I’m late to that party.

BBC/Guardian, et al feel like a curated library. ITV now feels like a twitter-stream, or as Paul said like tumblr.

It feels very “now”, you’re seeing the news of the moment. It’s not going to replace BBC News as my homepage, but it’s good to see ITV competing meaningfully, innovating not aping.

Forget inbox zero: Social Gaming Zero is the new unattainable goal

“I’ll start that once I’ve replied to my game requests” is the latest way to Get Nothing Done(TM).

I’m terrible for using arbitrary events to get me to do something. Does that make me like node.js? Anyway, I’ve been stuck on my sofa unable to start doing stuff for days thanks to the sudden popularity of Draw Something with my friends.

Between that, and the ever-present Words With Friends I’ve got a whacamole of social requests flying in, and the compulsive need to reply to them is too hard to break.

I’m going to start on all the stuff I have to do once I’ve got that to number to zero, but I don’t get anything done because people keep drawing comical stick-figures in various states of lewdness.

My inbox, that’s fine, that’s manageable. But my gaming, now that is a problem.