Hi, I'm Alex.

In today's rapidly changing business landscape, organisations need to foster a culture of innovation to thrive. However, innovation doesn't just happen – it needs a fertile ground to take root and flourish. A key factor that sets successful organisations apart is their ability to cultivate an empowering environment where people feel valued, supported, and inspired to do their best work. This article explores the concept of "Greenhouse Engineering," a term coined by Tony Hsieh, the late CEO of Zappos. Just as a greenhouse provides the optimal conditions for plants to grow, leaders must focus on creating an environment where innovation and creativity naturally thrive.

This article explores five key elements that contribute to building a successful "Greenhouse" for innovation: psychological safety, collaboration, adequate resources, radical candour, and continuous reflection. By understanding and implementing these principles, leaders can empower their teams to unlock their full potential and drive sustainable success.

Aligning product development with business goals can make or break success. The amount of runway that a team has to develop a product is decided by the amount of investment and that can vary significantly on the size of the organisation and the appetite of the investors. Sometimes it feels particularly hard to align business objectives with product goals and this can get more challenging as a business scales.

Effective software leadership goes beyond delivering products — it’s about ensuring outcomes benefit customers, the business, and the team. When done well, technology should feel magical, I often start with emotions, a concept I call “Emotional Driven Design/Development.”

I recently chatted to a few students who will be finishing University in the next few months, unfortunately, we can't hire them all but I wanted to share 3 things I think they should expect from their managers! Lots of organisations have different styles but wherever you end up from graduate to CEO. I think this is pretty universal

The apple vision pro is no doubt an amazing bit of kit. I was lucky enough to spend a whole day deploying and tinkering with it not long before it came out. I've left most of the predictions to the mainstream and focused on the features and thoughts I had while working with it and since.

The biggest customer of your data is your business. This article parallels the evolution of the UK's road network with today's data infrastructure challenges, underscoring the necessity of a solid data base for successful AI implementation. It offers a comprehensive guide on enhancing data quality, integration, and governance, crucial for navigating the complexities of AI and ML. With practical advice on identifying and rectifying data environment shortcomings, and insights into the emerging regulatory framework, this piece is a valuable roadmap for any organization looking to leverage AI and ML technologies effectively and ethically.

This was not a high point in my career. It's a story of single metric bias, how I let one measure become a 'source of truth', failed to manage up and ended up yelling at one of the most respected engineers in my team.

Have you ever been asked "Do you feel recognised at work?" perhaps as part of an engagement survey perhaps from HR? It's a good question.

We've known for at least 70 years [1] that there is a connection between being recognised at work and feeling motivated. I've occasionally been asked to look into 'encouraging' engineering teams to share more public recognition because when measured, they do it less than any other area of the business. Public recognition is good, so should we be worried its not happening publicly?

Recruiting and retaining good staff is amongst the top challenges for every business.

There is a world where it's not always expensive, doesn't take an age, reduces lead times and actively contributes to the in-situ teams growth.

In-house recruitment teams have been saying it for years, but having built this kind of function alongside HR a few times now I thought I'd share some of the approaches that have gained results!

It's not fair.😫 You've been thrown on the emotional rollercoaster of redundancy, you didn't ask for it, you're awesome at your job and you don't deserve this. I can't change that but having been there several times I have a few tips that might help.

Here's 10 events that I've run that will work for teams that are mostly remote and want to get together occasionally. Nothing too run of the mill!