Declan Chellar

Here is a fabulous animation from RSA Animate, illustrating a talk by author Barbara Ehrenreich on how positive thinking can be delusional and harmful. She basically says what I said in “Reality check“, but with more eloquence and concrete examples. I dislike her already. Applause to the cartoonist also. Thanks to my friend Rowan Manahan [...]

A friend told me the other day that at a company meeting, the directors of the company brought up the subject of work-life balance. It seems they were getting tired of the scales being tipped strongly in favour of work. The CEO’s response? “You should take up Tai Chi, it has done wonders for me.” [...]

Yesterday I had an online chat with a friend and the subject quickly turned to work stress and bullying. My friend gave me permission to reproduce the chat on my blog, so here it is, abridged, with some further comments inserted by me afterwards for your benefit. Such comments appear in green (See what I [...]

I am a great believer in facing up to reality, regardless of the pain involved. I don’t know whether it is my experience as a senior business analyst or my character or both that causes me to step in from time to time and say: “Stop! Time for a reality check!” How many times has [...]

Which of the following two profiles do you think matches what a leader should be and which matches what leaders generally are in reality? Profile A Profile B Is likely to be male. Has a “Can do” attitude, to the extent that he never challenges the status quo. Makes promises based on aspirations and expects [...]

To the people who think up security questions for web sites: I do not have a favourite actor / musician / artist. If I pick one just for the sake of it, I will not remember my choice when I have to answer the security question. I did not have a favourite place to visit [...]

Out of curiosity, I have Wordled my curriculum vitae.

A former colleague posted that question in Facebook today. My response was: Because many people care more about leaving their stamp than about achieving the strategic goal. “I succeeded even though we failed” sounds better to such people than “We succeeded”. This is also true on integration projects where there are multiple suppliers. When we [...]

Networking is important in business, but it amazes me how clumsy some people’s attempts at networking are. Case 1 Not long ago a business contact of my wife’s asked if she could help her husband get work, as he had just lost his job. My wife put his CV (resumé) about and arranged some interviews [...]

As a business analyst, my job is largely to help a business define and document its needs, usually so that those needs can be satisfied by technology. However, if we assume that technology is always the answer, we might find ourselves overlooking other solutions that might satisfy the business needs more quickly and more cheaply, [...]