All posts in Digital

Manual Of Me

Joining a new organisation and becoming the new boy again is daunting. A great friend of mine recently moved roles inside the NHS and created a ‘Manual Of Me’ to share with his new colleagues, I loved the idea so much that, with his permission, I have done the same. I figured if I was… Read More

Ten Skills for Tomorrow

Recently an infographic of the most important skills to have and to recruit in 2024 popped up on LinkedIn. It is a really interesting list and it got me thinking how do we define these capabilities, how do we go after them in the team and when we have them how do we deploy them… Read More

The Paradox of Great Talent

We see the battle for talent globally and it’s no different for Grant Ecker, Chief Architect at WBA and Rich Corbridge, CIO at Boots who both acknowledge the criticality of building strong teams and the paradox that exists in finding, developing and retaining top talent. If you’ve recruited the best talent in the market, these individuals won’t stay stationary in… Read More

Boots and BCS – Professionalisation of IT.

Every CIO is striving for the professionalisation of IT in some way or another.  In some cases, CIOs are doing it to make recruitment and retention easier; in other cases, it’s to position IT in the best possible way within their organisation. Elsewhere, it’s because CIOs believe it is quite simply the right thing to… Read More

Transformation of all kinds…..

Digital transformation takes on many forms, often it has a focus on removing something old, clunky, unsafe or simply expensive as a goal. In my time as a CIO I have tried to remove tractor printers from Ireland, the fax machine from the NHS and now the carousel from Pharmacy stores. It was amazing today… Read More

Boots IT & Architecture Partnership

What do Rich Corbridge, CIO of Boots in the UK and Ireland and Grant Ecker, Chief Architect at WBA have in common? The Boots IT CIO stretching to think like an Architect? A Chief Architect stretching to think like a CIO? Sure, we could start there… but the roots are quite a bit deeper. Grant – It… Read More

CIO and CMO Collaboration – Tech Monitor

Put on here for prosperity and to link to other articles on here Boots CIO: IT and marketing colloboration is key to omnichannel success (techmonitor.ai) . Boots CIO: Collaboration with marketing underpins omnichannel succes. By Cristina Lago  09 Feb 2021 (Last Updated 10 Feb 2021) Health and beauty retailer Boots is on a mission to develop a… Read More

Change Cycle and My Guardrails…

Organisational change, restructure of teams, development of new structures, org charts, words that fill me with dread and excitement in equal measure. In 2021 what is THE ideal structure of a function that is set up to deliver the foundations of digital transformation and how do we create a culture (and an operating model) that… Read More

Digital and the commodity world…

I was reading a Pitchfork retrospective article about the seminal electronic band Boards of Canada the other day and a phrase came up, Avoiding the timely, they aim to achieve the timeless …and I fell in love with what it means and how it can be applied to what we try to do with digital… Read More