Posted by Robert Merrill on June 14, 2009 under Uncategorized | 
Be the First to Comment
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, because the hardest part of business software is the people part. I’m re-reading this because I’ve had several Crucial Conversations during the recent forced march. I’ve mostly done OK, I think.
Posted by Robert Merrill on June 12, 2009 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
“Thank you,” my three active clients, for keeping me so busy that I haven’t posted anything to my blog in exactly two months!
I don’t blog about clients. It would violate my agreements. Besides, it’s tacky. And between client work and personal life events, I haven’t done enough professional reading to have anything worth saying.
I know that needs to change because I need to be developing new business all the time, but the overall feeling is one of gratitude, not guilt or frustration. I’m thankful to those who trust me and value my contributions enough to keep me this busy. I get to feel useful every day, and it keeps a roof over our heads and food on the table. And that’s never to be taken for granted, especially now.
So, thank you, clients. You know who you are.
And if you’re not a client, but are in the Madison WI area, and are in the information technology profession and are out of work, contact me. Seriously. I won’t hire you, but maybe I know someone who knows someone who will.
Posted by Robert Merrill on March 12, 2009 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
So said Tony Shearer, former CEO of British merchant Bank Singer and Friedlander, founded in 1907, purchased by the Icelandic bank Kaupthing in 2005, and destroyed in the collapse of the Icelandic financial system in October 2008.
Iceland? In Wall Street on the Tundra, Michael Lewis, writing in Vanity Fair, tells how the Icelanders figured out how to turn cod into Ph.D.’s, geothermal energy into an aluminum-smelting industry (provided the factory site could be certified free of elves), and everyday Icelanders into hedge-fund traders and currency speculators, until it all came crashing down in October 2008.
It’s a long article, but take the time to read it. There are lessons for us all.
