130 Blogs

One of the things we setup early at Thought Ensemble was contributing to the technology and strategy community in which we work. We try to do that in a variety of ways including participating in local charities and professional organizations, but one of the most important is through our blogs. Early on, we set up a rule that we would average at least 1 blog per week per person. So, this year, between the three full time employees at our startup, we've created over 130 blog entries.

Some of these entries are simply some humor from the day or a link to an interesting post, but some of them are pretty substantial. My favorite from Lisa this year targeted IT Performance Measurement. In it, she re-purposes ideas from Kaplan and Norton and thinks strategically on how to apply them for IT groups. This idea comes from real client work that she conducted with real results.

We also produced a great blog on the financial impacts of doing Agile Development. John cuts through alot of the theoretical debate surrounding these practices and explores the financial impacts. I find the argument pretty compelling and wonder how so many groups refuse to adopt these modern practices considering the strong arguments for their adoption.

My own favorite post was inspired by Deloitte's Shift Index. They point out that whatever it is that management is currently doing in the U.S., it clearly isn't working. Return On Assets has dropped steadily over the last 40 years of so. That inspired a series of blog postings on some of the problems I see in many companies: Tight Ass Management.

So, as this year wraps up, I'm really proud of the company we've started. But mostly, I'm proud because we are participating in the community working to advance the use of technology in the best way possible in our organizations. We've chosen to take a different path in the consulting world: we don't lock up our knowledge, we don't hide it and keep it for ourselves. We believe that contributing to the world is not only the right thing to do, but in the end it will yield better financial results.