Business Process ImprovementTag Archive

Creation of good policies and procedures is an art that can be helped with some core advice. Policies are the backbone of how a business tells their employees how to act and react, and ensures consistency and productivity. A great company culture, a consistent vision and values, and compliance with… Continue Reading Creating good policies and procedures

Cybersecurity is more than just firewalls and anti-virus, goes further than just zero-trust approaches and cultural changes, and is beyond just policy and compliance. Cybersecurity is not an ‘action’ or a ‘solution’ – it is an ongoing activity that needs constant review and updating. Cybersecurity Planning will vary for each… Continue Reading Cybersecurity planning

What is your strategy for patching and updates? Whilst it might be tempting to just leave your systems on auto-update, the alternative to manually delay updates to always be one behind the latest (also known as an N-1 update strategy), may also be a problem. Updates and patching of software… Continue Reading N-1 update strategy

I have posted a few articles about different security standards and frameworks, such as PCI-DSS, The Essential 8, ISO27001, NIST and others – and in my experience, there are some organisations that focus on compliance instead of security. People desperately chase the dogma of maturity levels or complying with every… Continue Reading Focus on Compliance or Security?

As the world becomes more aware of cybersecurity risks and issues, company boards need to become more aware of the issues that cybersecurity poses for their businesses. However, it can be difficult for non-technical people to learn the new terminologies and concepts. The question still remains on how we educate… Continue Reading Educate Boards in Cybersecurity

Last month, I wrote an article on the Essential 8. The article pointed out that for most of the measures, they should be the absolute minimum measures that organisations take with their systems. For those who work in the area of security, most of the Essential 8 are common-sense and… Continue Reading Obvious PCI-DSS benefits

For your next system development, make the systems intuitive instead of spending time up-skilling people in potentially high turnover positions. Great customer interaction should be your focus, ahead of designing a system that meets your internal needs for audit and reporting. Too often systems are designed with customer and user… Continue Reading Make your new systems intuitive

There are many projects I have been involved with, where the product design or implementation has been driven by the need for reporting, analysis or compliance, but backend effectiveness does not equate to customer satisfaction, and businesses should be more aware of this in their product releases. A key example… Continue Reading Backend effectiveness does not equate to customer satisfaction

People have asked me about my leadership style, and as it is such a common question, I have decided to post it here. People recognise that I am passionate, and I lead through inspiration and desire to achieve the strategic goals. I am a positive and passionate person who motivates… Continue Reading My leadership style

Solving problems often takes a completely new viewpoint over what the problem actually is. There have been many recent studies and trials of working weeks durations, including a successful trial at Microsoft for a 4-day week that increased productivity. However, I have a different idea to solve the problem: changing… Continue Reading The new week – 5 on, 5 off

It is human nature to try and avoid mistakes and the embarrassment of failure, after all, it is educated in to use to avoid mistakes through “operant conditioning“, but it is important to take a policy of embracing mistakes in cybersecurity, to avoid people trying to hide times when they… Continue Reading Embracing mistakes in cybersecurity

If you have ever been in a tricky situation, you will know that half the battle is knowing what is going on – you can’t fix a problem if you don’t know what has happened. However, root cause analysis needs to wait until after the issue is resolved. Too often,… Continue Reading Half the battle is knowing what is going on

Organisations often run head-long into digital transformation, with a focus on technology and toolsets, and not fully understanding the impact on staff. Digital transformation is more than just moving all paper processes into electronic versions of themselves, more than just running out some new collaborative tools or enabling legacy applications… Continue Reading Digital Transformation and People

During my MBA, I was taught that the purpose of a business is to make money, and that customers should always be the focus of everything a company does. However, I think that this view is no longer valid and that my role in leading business by caring for staff… Continue Reading Leading business by caring for staff

We have all been there, either by working with someone straight out of University or when you were entering the workforce straight out of education – full of passion and enthusiasm, and keen to make a change. The teenager (or person in their twenties) may challenge and ask questions about… Continue Reading Teenagers might have answers

If you work in IT, then you will know that there is the ever-present spectre of zombie systems, which remain active and running, but not actually doing anything. These can be servers that were implemented for a project that got cancelled, file shares that are no longer accessed, databases that… Continue Reading What is a Scream Test

I will show you how to achieve successes through playing off the inherent nature of people to be lazy. There is a tendency for people – no matter how intelligent and engaged they are – to take the easiest option, and there are ways that you can use this to… Continue Reading Use the lazy option for success

I have encountered many baffling processes in businesses that leaves me wondering – who is your process written for? You may have spent many hours performing a Digital Transformation, focusing on streamlining processes and removing paper forms and taking advantage of new technologies to automate and accelerate processes and functions… Continue Reading Who is your process written for?

Unfortunately working extra hours and overworking has become a ‘badge of honour’ to try and prove that you are a hard worker and somehow to justify that you are valuable to your business. I strongly disagree and consider overworking a disease that must be cured. Overworking leads to burnout. Overworking… Continue Reading The overworking disease