Back to the day job, only to be shipped down to London for two days’ offsite with the rest of the IT management team (several hundred). I decided to take the train down, as I was very impressed with the GNER onboard wifi connection, when I used it via my own laptop. Now that our work laptops have been opened up to ad-hoc internet connectivity I was hoping for four hours’ plus productive work. Alas, the multiple layers of software on the laptop failed miserably to cope with the GNER service, and again failed with the conference hotel broadband service. The internet works because it is a standard. The more that people try to over-engineer complex solutions on top of it, the less likely they are to work.

So, two days without internet access, which did at least leave me free to concentrate on the 20+ hours of workshops over two days. The session was led by the top-tier IT management team, based on Professor Tichy and his Teachable Point of View(tm). This management guru had come into our organisation at director level and told his audience it was their job – not his – to spread his message down the organisation. Now, the first rule of consultancy is that every assignment must generate further work for the consultants. The fact that Tichy was prepared to violate this sacred principle in such a brazen and outrageous fashion immediately gained my vote.

I emerged from the two days pleasantly impressed. Some of the most fascinating periods in my professional life have been spent in organisations struggling with cultural change. There is some truly impressive work going on elsewhere in our company, and there is no reason why our people in IT should be missing out on it. This activity gets my vote.

Final high point – after the conference was over I took the Tube across London to a new hotel just down the road from our IT buildings, and decided to take a wander around and look at local pubs / restaurants. I ended up in a new-ish looking Indian restaurant, and had a Lamb Sikandari with tarka dahl and rice. It was superb – I confess to a weakness for lamb shank but his was something special – juicy, cooked to perfection, just the right amount of spices – the best meal I have eaten for a long long time. If you find yourself in London, get down to the East End and give it a try. Brilliant.

Oh, and of course the work laptop couldn’t access the internet in this hotel either. Maybe fixing that should be part of our new IT strategy….

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