Category Archives: Ask Martyn

Ask Martyn and questions you may have that are related to Organisational Strategy and Information Architecture and Management.

Nothing achievable is impossible: Challenges, Self-worth and Strategies – 2026 Replay

09 Thu Oct 2014

Posted by in Ask Martyn, Best principles, Creativity, Excellence, Methodology

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Martyn Richard Jones

Remastered for 2026

I came into IT at the tail end of the seventies, joining one of the original computing pioneers.

It was a conservative company led by veterans, engineers, accountants, and sales professionals, with many ties to the US administration, the Department of Defence, and intelligence agencies.

My interests at the time were in philosophy, politics and economics. I liked meeting people and talking, and I also enjoyed helping people solve real-life business problems, so I was always engaged with corporate staff and executive management rather than with the real hard-core technicians and engineers.

The thing is, I had no idea what constrained IT, so I never had that baggage when thinking about solutions.

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What triggers a review of organisational strategy? An example – Remastered for 2026

08 Wed Oct 2014

Posted by in Ask Martyn, Best principles, Business Intelligence, Strategy, tactics

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The way it is, and all that jazz

What triggers a review of organisational strategy?

Well, typically organisations usually shy away from major strategy reviews when things are just ticking over quite nicely. The old axiom of “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it”, has a lot of power of persuasion, even in cases where the logical and coherent thing to do would be to continually review strategy.

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Protesters? Actually, most people are happy with things as they stand – Remaster 2026

01 Wed Oct 2014

Posted by in Ask Martyn, Big Data, Business Intelligence, Data Warehouse

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If you judged everything by what the media tells us, you would get the impression that the world is in continuous revolt. Violence, destruction and protest is everywhere. It’s like as if every hour of the day there is one reason or another to go marching, standing or sitting somewhere about something.

Well, that’s the impression one may get.

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Data Disasters: Lessons from Widget and Wodget’s Failures – Remaster 2026

23 Tue Sep 2014

Posted by in Ask Martyn, Extract

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It’s 9:45 on a cold and wintry Monday morning; crowds of people are huddled around the water fountains as gossip spreads throughout the building like wildfire. There has been a multiple data pile up in the Widget and Wodget data centre, there are a few casualties but no reported fatalities. No one knows what quite is going on, as shadowy rumour hints at flying pigs, rebellious ducks and rolling heads.

It was to be a big day for Widget and Wodget, “your neighbourhood’s favourite Prime Brokers”, it was billed as the Senior Mega Monday to end all Mega Mondays. A mega coup for the hallowed financial institution of W&W; today would be the day that would herald in the culmination of two major IPOs and one multi-billion global M&A deal signed off, as well as the launch of a raft of CDOs.

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