Category: Leadership

Digital ‘Never Forget’ moments – from 9/11 to AI…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Digital technology, Ethics & Regulation, Information Technology, Innovation, Leadership, Life, Risk, safety, Tech for social good

It’s 25 years since 9/11, a truly ‘never forget’ moment. The Badger was workings at his desk in an office outside London when his son rang to ask if he was in London and safe. His son’s voice dripped with concern. The Badger provided the necessary reassurance and his son told him about the World Trade Towers, and that news channels were speculating that Canary Wharf and other London towers might also be targets. That phone call, let alone then watching the live pictures, has always been a ‘never forget’ moment for the Badger. It’s sobering to realise that ~40% of the world’s population today are <25 years old and relate to 9/11 mainly through images and information on social media, streaming platforms, and traditional television. Nevertheless, that day of atrocity will always be one of history’s ‘never forget’ moments.

The 9/11 anniversary caused the Badger to muse about digital technology’s ‘never forget’ moments in the last 25 years since that atrocity. Why? Because since then, digital technology has reshaped power structures, expectations, communication, global markets, and everyone’s behaviour. A few of the macro ‘never forget’ moments that emerged from this musing are as follows:  

  • The arrival of the iPhone in ~2007 because it embedded smartphones as disruptive consumer devices that have changed communication, business, photography, navigation, and entertainment forever.
  • The 2008/9 financial crash, because the exposed vulnerabilities in traditional banking systems spawned innovative fintech digital tools which have since improved, automated, and expanded financial services for individuals and businesses.
  • The 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, because it raised awareness of how much social media platforms impact culture, politics, marketing, global behaviour, wellbeing, and the privacy of individuals.
  • The 2020 global COVID pandemic, because digital technology became essential for remote working, video conferencing, and the design, development and production of the mRNA vaccines which saved millions of lives then and continue to do so now.
  • The 2022 release of ChatGPT, because it marked AI becoming mainstream for the public. It reached 100 million users within 2 months, triggered an AI investment boom, and profoundly changed forever how governments, businesses, and individuals think about technology, work, and machine intelligence.

Other moments emerged, as did one overarching truth – digital technology has reshaped the very fabric of society since 9/11.

Another ‘never forget’ digital moment happened in recent days. The US President belittled the worries of major US AI company leaders that advances are happening so fast that there’s a tangible threat to human safety, and that perhaps development should slow to put safeguards  in place. The President’s ‘No, it’s a hoax’’ response wasn’t that of a wise statesman, it was the response of someone with money, power, ego, and winning at any cost at the centre of everything. Should the worst happen with AI, people will ‘never forget’ that human safety was not on the President’s priority list…  

Who really gets a problem project back on the rails?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Information Technology, IT Project Management, Leadership, Learning, Technology

There’s rarely a single cause for why a software or systems project goes off the rails. Normally, project problems are a consequence of human, organisational, and process-related issues caused by things like poorly defined requirements, scope creep, poor planning and tracking, poor line management oversight, poor communication, and difficult client relationships. Sometimes projects really hit the buffers and matters end up in the law courts. More often than not, however, client and supplier executives recognise that failure is, for one reason or another, not an option and so they agree to do what it takes to get the project back on the rails and get the system delivered. One of the Badger’s formative experiences was being part of a small team tasked with getting one of his employer’s major fixed-price projects back on the rails. The project was a basket case exhibiting all the causal characteristics noted above, but the system to be delivered was strategically and politically important to the client and supplier alike. Turning it around was hard work but a great learning experience.

One of the Badger’s colleagues on the fix-it team, Jock (not their real name), was an experienced Scotsman with a sense of humour. Their task was to re-establish a comprehensive, contractually compliant, Functional Specification for the system that was fully agreed with the client. This meant Jock and others, including sometimes the Badger, met with the client’s team of operational users and contractual minders for daily functional discussions over many weeks. It was soon evident that Jock was objective, entirely focused on his task, and masterful in corralling those with different opinions and functional perspectives to a common agreement. Eventually a new Functional Specification, the lynchpin to getting the project back on the rails, was formally agreed. Jock had been firm, fair, and engaging throughout. Although he’d built a good relationship with the client team and great respect within the project team, he didn’t consider himself a natural leader or negotiator.

What did the Badger learn from working with Jock? Firstly, to recognise the difference between a negotiable issue and a non-negotiable principle. Secondly, to say ‘No’ and mean it when it’s appropriate and necessary. Thirdly, that saying, ‘Yes, but that’s not part of the contracted baseline’ unemotionally and assertively is an effective way of saying ‘No, you can’t have it unless we agree the impact and price’. The Badger learned something else too, namely that Jock was a natural leader, and that leaders don’t have to be extroverts, aggressive, intolerant, petulant, or have a distant demeanour. Jock demonstrated that natural leaders are relatable, build respect, have a backbone and principles, don’t clamour to be in the spotlight, and remain objective and fair under pressure. When a project goes off the rails, we should remember that it’s people like Jock rather than company executives who really get it back on the rails.

More STEM-educated MPs needed for effective national leadership

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Education, Engineering, Information Technology, Leadership, Politics, Science, Technology

The lawn’s brown, the flowers and trees look decidedly sad, and there appears to be fewer bumblebees, honeybees, and small birds than usual. There are, however, a greater number and variety of butterflies than normal. These were the Badger’s first thoughts when sitting in the shade contemplating the world after entertaining his grandson at the weekend. His thoughts then wandered into the realities of the current world that his young grandson’s generation face. It’s been an exceptional UK summer, with blue skies and high temperatures across much of the nation. For a nation that is renowned for talking about the weather, the heat brings mixed blessings – there are water shortages, hosepipe bans, and a high risk of destructive vegetation fires. Many people are wringing their hands and banging the climate change drum, but the Badger’s grandson is taking the heatwaves in his stride! He thinks it’s much better having good weather in the school holiday period so that he can be outdoors rather than housebound due to rain and gloom.

The Badger’s thoughts moved onto matters oblivious to his grandson. Things like, for example, the fact that being big and powerful doesn’t mean you’ll succeed (as the Ukraine and Middle East conflicts illustrate), and that with AI the world’s embarked on its most dangerous period of change ever. Whilst there’s much worry due to fossil fuel emissions and climate change, the consumption of resources driven by AI and other technological developments also have major consequences for the planet that hence the future life of the Badger’s grandson’s generation. With a sigh, the Badger’s cogitations concluded that the nature and predisposition of humans, and self-serving leadership dynamics, are at the heart of many of the world’s woes.

The self-serving leadership conclusion prompted the Badger to explore the educational background of the current UK Cabinet. This revealed that only one current UK Cabinet member has studied a STEM subject at university; a situation that’s essentially unchanged from Kier Starmer’s Cabinet. It also revealed (see here) that of the 650 elected Members of the UK Parliament, ~83% have university degrees but only 17% have a STEM degree, a proportion that’s barely changed in 20 years. With ~ 46% of UK undergraduates in the country studying STEM subjects, a measure of 17% suggests significant STEM underrepresentation in the country’s political and governmental circles. No wonder, the Badger mused, that the country has not been firing on all cylinders during this century.

Life today is dominated by science, technology, engineering and maths. In an era of AI and rapid, AI-enabled, science and technological advances, surely there must be more STEM-educated people around the UK Cabinet table for effective national leadership? Of course, there should. Afterall, STEM-educated people, as noted here, base decisions on data and unspun truth, both essential if the nation’s ever to have the leadership needed to get its mojo back…

Land for food versus AI and Solar Power…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Agriculture, AI, Data Centres, Electricity, Information Technology, Leadership, Property, Risk

Love him or hate him, Jeremy Clarkson and the Amazon ‘Clarkson’s Farm’ series have highlighted the reality of British Farming more than any other programme. Farming is tough. The hours, bureaucracy, and regulations are horrendous, and making a meagre profit is an   unrelenting challenge. Fifty years ago, the UK imported ~35% of its food and today it’s around 40%. For an island with prime agricultural land, one might expect the country to want to maximise the use of every inch of it to achieve greater food self-sufficiency, especially given lessons from the COVID pandemic, the Ukraine and Middle East conflicts, and other geopolitical tensions. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Prime agricultural land, as the article here illustrates, is under attack. Rather than being used for food, it’s being converted into huge solar farms because ‘the only way to have energy security is if we take a pro-growth approach to building more clean energy in Britain’. That’s ideological balderdash, of course, from a government minister who’s just overruled the recommendations of his own inspectors to approve the use of prime agricultural land for a massive solar farm.

Fifty years ago, ~95% of our electricity was generated using coal and oil, half of which was imported. Today the UK mix of electricity generation is very different, as can be seen on the live energy dashboard here. At the time of writing, solar is 27%, wind 25%, nuclear 8% and 23% is imported across interconnectors with Europe. Our electricity generation self-sufficiency has improved way more than our food self-sufficiency over the last 50 years, so why use prime agricultural land for even more capacity? Why not use brownfield sites or car parks? The answer, the Badger senses, may rest in something JD Vance, the US Vice President, said recently, namely ‘the UK has been failed by its leadership for a long time’. An uncomfortable truth, perhaps, particularly when it comes to the use of prime agricultural land.

The Badger’s not a farmer, so why this focus on the use of agricultural land? Because our countryside, and everything in it, is being eroded to develop huge solar farms and huge electricity and water hungry, AI data centres – see here, here, here, and here, for example. AI fever, anti-fossil fuel zealotry, and ideological dogma seem to trump the common sense of better food self-sufficiency and preservation of our ‘green and pleasant land’. In 1804, William Blake used this phrase in his poem, Jerusalem, to reflect a longing for a simpler, calmer country during the Industrial Revolution. This still resonates today with AI and electricity at the heart of a modern industrial revolution. Will the UK’s new Prime Minister prove JD Vance wrong, preserve the UK’s ‘green and pleasant land’, keep AI and ideological zealotry in check, and improve food self-sufficiency? Don’t hold your breath…

The power of silence…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Information Technology, Leadership, Learning, Life, Management, Project Management

This week the Badger was asked a simple question: ‘What was one of the most powerful tools you used during your career?’ The answer was ‘Silence’ – a response that was not what the person asking expected. They thought the Badger’s answer would be either something like a browser, search engine, Excel, or ChatGPT, or a probing project review process. Rather taken aback, they asked the Badger to explain.

The Badger’s first real appreciation of the power of silence began when, as a young project manager, he and others attended a difficult client meeting with his boss. The client was arrogant, asserting wrongly that project delays were the reason for problems in their business, and making all kinds of threats and ‘what are you going to do about it’ demands. There were numerous points in the meeting where the client expected the Badger’s boss to respond, but they remained silent which was broken by the client continuing to express their opinions and assertions. The Badger found himself wanting to fill the silences himself, but he didn’t because his boss had told everyone to say nothing before the meeting started. When the meeting ended, the Badger felt nothing had been achieved. Intrigued, he asked his boss why they had stayed silent during the pauses where the client obviously anticipated a response. His boss smiled, and said they’d used ‘the power of silence’ to maximise his understanding of the client’s feelings and position without saying anything that might make the client’s own problems ours. Silence, they added, is one of the most potent forces in the human experience.

Experienced managers and leaders know that silence often speaks louder than words. Silence conveys many things – for example, emotion, confidence, fear, resistance, control, acceptance, disagreement, trust or distrust – because its meaning depends entirely on the context in which it occurs. The best leaders don’t puff out their chests, raise their voices, bark out orders, demand to be the centre of attention and to always have the last word, they often use silence to achieve their objectives, whatever those may be, to great effect.

Being able to wield the power of silence is even more important in today’s digital-dominated work and private environments. These are the noisiest they’ve ever been, because we are constantly bombarded with, and thus stimulated by, huge amounts of daily digital input which weakens our desire to remain silent. It’s worth remembering that long before structured language existed our ancestors communicated with their bodies, breath, and stillness, and that evolution has taught us to read silent pauses as closely as speech. So, whatever your role, ensure you consciously have ‘the power of silence’ in your arsenal of tools for achieving your objectives. After all, sometimes the most important, powerful, and best thing to say… is nothing at all…

Consequences…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Business, Digital technology, Information Technology, Leadership, Life, Management, Offshoring, Opinion, Outsource, social media

The UK’s recent announcement about banning social media for under-16s initiated many media interviews with younger teenagers. The Badger found one TV news interview with a teenage girl to be a great illustration of how social media has changed childhood. The interviewer asked how many hours the girl used social media at the weekend. The answer was ‘9 hours’. The interviewer then asked the girl what she would do without access to social media. The answer was ‘Stare at the walls’. These answers say a lot about the impact of social media on children, and about modern society as a whole.

When there are digital technology advances, there are always consequences. In fact, in life, to quote Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘everybody sooner or later sits down to a banquet of consequences’. Many years ago, one of the Badger’s peers, a forthright and polarising individual, was promoted to CEO. On chairing their first leadership team meeting, they delivered decisions and instructions that most attendees felt were seriously flawed. The new CEO, however, was adamant that they knew best and that they didn’t care about the consequences. The Badger recalls thinking that this was pure dictatorship rather than leadership! Over time, the consequences caught up with the CEO, and they were abruptly and rather predictably exited from the company. Thinking about the consequences of decisions before embarking on a course of action is always wise in any leadership role!

The Badger learned early in his IT career that there are always consequences from tech advancements, and that some consequences can be unwelcome from an economic, employment, and capability perspective. For example, a couple of decades ago tech advances enabled a drive to move software development and IT help desk and support services offshore to lower cost countries. As a result, on-time software delivery became less reliable, IT service quality for end users dipped, customer confidence and relationships wobbled, programming diminished as a career path for onshore software engineers, and onshore capabilities became diluted. Things have changed since because the consequences have had to be addressed.

Today, social media and AI are obvious examples of tech advances with unwelcome consequences. Over 40 years ago, Steve Jobs memorably said ‘There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television – but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent’. The Badger thinks if Jobs were alive today then he would say the same thing with the word television replaced by either social media or AI. The Badger thus thinks ‘Consequences’ is a good candidate for the 2026 word of the year covering both tech and the world more generally. After all, you don’t have to look far in today’s society to see that the world is having to deal with many, many unwelcome consequences of policies and actions…

AI IPOs – Look, Listen, and Learn…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Business, Delivery, Information Technology, Leadership, Technology

The young Badger was given some advice by his new boss when joining a dynamic IT company many years ago, namely ‘Look into everything that’s put in front of you, especially numbers. Listen quietly and closely to everything that others say. Learn from situations and from the good practices and behaviours of others. Heed this advice and you’ll do well’. Decades later that advice is as good today as it was then. As the Badger’s witnessed over the years, not everyone takes such advice on board. He’s been amazed many times that some people running projects or business units have not taken the trouble to ‘look, listen, or learn’ in order to understand the underlying performance of their areas of responsibility.

Looking at, understanding, and being able to explain what’s driving the metrics is important in managing any business or project activity. It’s crucial to leadership, being in control, and instilling confidence in others. One of the young Badger’s first formative experiences was at a CEO review of a business unit’s operational performance. The CEO was a demanding, numbers-focused individual, and the business unit leader had the reputation of being a handwaving optimist with a reluctance to hear bad news. The review did not go well. It quickly became clear that the unit leader’s view of their business was completely at odds with the trends in the unit’s metrics. The irritated CEO raised their voice and said ‘It’s not wrong to make a profit, and if you don’t know your numbers then you don’t know your business’. A lecture followed, pointing out that understanding financial and other metrics was crucial to successful business management. It was an uncomfortable review to witness, but it reinforced to the Badger that the advice he had received was sound. Shortly thereafter, the business unit leader was replaced.

In the AI world, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are progressing IPOs. The Badger’s applied the look (at the numbers), listen (to a wide variety of knowledgeable commentators), and learn (from the history of the digital revolution over 30 years) advice from years ago to assess if these IPOs might be good investments for members of the public. He concluded that they are speculative investments. AI may be a transformative technology that cannot be ignored but investing through a fear of missing out (FOMO) rather than rational assessment is rarely a good idea. Huge sums are being spent on building the necessary infrastructure, but so far none of these companies have made a profit from AI. This short YouTube video neatly explains the AI race in an easily understandable way. It ends making the point that building AI is one thing, but making money from it over the long term is the real challenge. The Badger’s decided that wariness is always sensible when no profits have been made so far, but a huge pot of gold is promised in the future…

Required leadership qualities – Competence, Consistency, Clarity, Communication and Charisma…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, Education, Information Technology, Leadership, Learning, Project Management, social media, Training

Early in the Badger’s IT career before the internet arrived, training for delivery people – project and team leaders, and technical staff – took place face to face in a group led by a senior delivery person and a professional trainer. Such training was often a one or two-day event conducted away from the hubbub of the workplace so that participants were not distracted by their normal work activities. At one course the Badger attended, participants were challenged to express the qualities that the members of project teams look for in their delivery leader. Participants, all team, or project leaders with various levels of experience, had ten minutes to produce five words for discussion with the course leaders and the wider group.

Many found it more difficult than expected because they struggled to think about delivery leadership from the perspective of team members who were not, and never aspired to be, leaders. Nevertheless, at the end of the exercise and subsequent discussion, the group converged on the following five words as required leadership qualities: Competence, Consistency, Clarity, Communication and Charisma. These words became known as the 5Cs and provided the theme underpinning the rest of the course. Whilst their context related to what delivery people look for from their delivery leader, the Badger’s found over the years that they are a good reference point for what to look for in leaders more generally.

The Badger’s worked for, and with, many senior leaders of all kinds over the years. They all had different personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. Some were more competent than others, some were more consistent and clearer than others, and some were better and more inspiring communicators than others. None were extroverts, but they all had a charisma that you couldn’t quite put your finger on. Underpinned by the 5Cs, the Badger considered some as much better leaders than others. There’s lots of broader and more detailed information available about the traits of good leaders, but the Badger’s routinely used the simple, qualitative, 5Cs as his mental ‘initial leadership quality’ checklist over the years to shape an initial opinion – which sometimes has subsequently changed. Sometimes, however, that initial opinion has not been very flattering and has not changed.

With the 5Cs concept in your psyche, you can’t help but use it to judge leaders who regularly appear on broadcast or social media even though you’ve never met them. Inevitably that’s unfair, but rather than relying on instinct alone, the 5Cs provides some structure in forming an opinion about where that person is on the POOR to GOOD leadership qualities spectrum. Ego, wealth, and having a powerful position is not the same as having good leadership qualities. For example, any leader who rants publicly and profanely on social media is unprofessional and sets a bad example for online behaviour. Someone with GOOD leadership qualities would never do this…

Untruth Social…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Conflict, Ethics & Regulation, Information Technology, Leadership, Opinion, social media

The Badger is not a journalist, a member of any political party, or a subscriber to any particular ideology. He’s just a member of the UK public whose blog normally avoids commenting on the pronouncements of the ‘global elites’ who recently gathered in Davos, Switzerland. Today is, however, an exception because President Trump’s recent utterances were an insulting word-salad where facts seemed irrelevant. Here are a few points from the Badger’s cogitation on the President’s various comments and positions.

The first point is that President Trump has been democratically elected and so we must assume that his policies and approach, whether domestic or foreign, have the support of the American people. The second is that he and this US administration are brutally ruffling feathers domestically in the US and internationally. The President has taken many positions to date that have validity, and many that don’t, but his bullying has changed how his country is viewed by the public beyond the USA’s shores forever.

The third point is that people in Europe feel that the USA is no longer a trusted ally. Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair. President Trump’s utterances have broken that trust. No one trusts a Russian because of President Putin, and now no one trusts an American because of President Trump! The fourth point is that this elderly President’s utterances fully highlight a character with a need for personal attention, praise, admiration and that they are always right on everything. A President who publishes emails from the leaders of longstanding allies and asserts that the UK army was not ‘a frontline fighter’ in Afghanistan is, frankly, untrustworthy, and undeserving of anyone’s respect.

So, here’s the final point. The old adage ‘don’t get angry, get even’ seems apt. National governments recognise their relationship with the US has changed and that adapting to a new future will be challenging. Governments may be angry but getting even is much more difficult for them. Ordinary members of their public, however, have more power to get even than they realise. The US stock market is heavily dependent on the performance of tech stocks. If ordinary members of the public in Europe collectively stopped using social media and streaming services for just one week then the big US tech giants’ revenues would be hit. If everyone stopped using social media for one week every month then the hit would soon mount to a crisis. Investors avidly track engagement metrics, and so stock prices could drop sharply because if users aren’t scrolling, money-making ads aren’t being served. The market impact could be problematic for President Trump.

In a world dominated by social media, streaming, and online services, it’s worth remembering that ordinary people have more power in their hands to register displeasure than most realise. Perhaps it’s time to change our behaviour and wield that power…

Everyone has a story about their dealings with the NHS…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Consulting, Information Technology, Leadership, NHS, Processes and Practices, Technology

In 1948, UK households received a leaflet telling them they were entitled to free health care. The UK’s National Health Service (NHS), funded from general taxation, free at the point of delivery, and available to all based on clinical need rather than income, was born. The NHS still exists, but the way it is organised and care is delivered, has changed considerably. The government of the day sets its budget and spending has grown, on average, by 3.9% in real terms since the 1950s. The NHS is huge.  It prioritizes emergencies ahead of treatments which are not immediately necessary but are important for maintaining or improving a patient’s life. Waiting lists can thus be long and are something the NHS can use operationally to stay within financial constraints. They are currently high and only responding slowly to government initiatives, as this  3-minute video highlights. The public remains sceptical about whether improvements are real because they still encounter frustrations with their NHS interactions. The care received from NHS doctors and nurses is rated highly, but navigating ‘the system’ to get it can be irritatingly problematic.

Everyone has a story about dealing with the NHS. In May 2025, after more than a year waiting, an acquaintance had a day-surgery procedure with an overnight stay and discharge the following morning. They were told on discharge that they’d receive a follow-up clinic appointment by letter for 4 to 5 months’ time. This was also recorded on their formal discharge letter. Having heard nothing by the end of October, they phoned the relevant hospital department to enquire about the appointment. They were passed between different extensions and ultimately to an answerphone where they left an appropriate message and their contact details. Having heard nothing again by early December, they phoned again and were ultimately redirected to a different extension to leave a message on an answerphone! Again, nothing had happened by early January 2026, and so they sent an email to an address buried in their discharge notes. An email reply appeared within two hours saying that the appointments team had been asked to make an appointment. Since then, there’s been nothing!

Yesterday the acquaintance asked the Badger, ‘Given your service operations and IT experience, is this a symptom of a failing service?’ They added, ‘In the old days, I’d have been given a card with my clinic appointment on it on discharge before leaving the ward. Who’s to blame for replacing that for the woeful process of today?’  The Badger answered the first question with yes, and the second with ‘Blame rests with governments, NHS leaders, and the external management consultants whose advice rarely improves NHS efficiency.’  To the Badger’s surprise, his acquaintance, a retired management consultant, agreed fully and added ‘more technology won’t help unless these processes get sorted’. They have a point…