Digital transformations are known more for their failures than their successes. Blame is typically attributed to the technology, whilst other aspects such as organisational and cultural readiness are rarely considered dimensions. The usual story goes like this: the organisation buys a platform, the integration turns out harder than the sales deck suggested, the budget stretches,…
People often ask me that, and the honest answer starts long before I had a name for any of this. I’ve been translating since I was a child: moving between languages, between symbols, between the ways different cultures choose to express the same idea. Long before I encountered the word semantics, I understood, instinctively, that…
By 2010, “quality management” mostly meant one thing: hoping a number typed into a spreadsheet three shifts ago was still there when you went looking for it. I was quality manager at a growing fuel cell manufacturer in Sussex, and growth had quietly outpaced the tools we were using to run the factory floor. We…
After 15 years in Quality Management, I left for Southeast Asia with no plan except to stop. I spent 9 months in Thailand doing something I had never really done before: nothing in particular. For the first time in my adult working life, I was genuinely unproductive. I discovered, slowly, reluctantly, and then with some…
