Last night I was spending some time reflecting on some of the better teachers I’ve had through my life, both in school and through my work life, and when I got thinking about Mr. Stan Wilson I had a Physics flashback and started thinking about how I’ve applied some of the lessons I learned in […]
Author Archive: Tim Empringham, MBA
Branding Revamp – Succeed Sooner
I’ve been doing some work to streamline my branding to a more consistent image, and to align my personal brand to my presence on the Internet. As a result I’m in the process of retiring the “Key Consulting” branding that I launched several years ago and have consolidated all of my Internet and other branding […]
Work Life “Blending”
At the Conference Board of Canada Innovation Summit this year one of the speakers during their lunch was Nitin Kawale, President of Cisco Canada. He spoke about how Cisco was enabling a concept he called Work Life “Blending” and contrasted it with the age old challenge of work life balance by accepting that in a […]
The Importance of a Plan
I think I’ve always just naturally broken my professional work down into planning steps and then executed according to that plan, even if it wasn’t done in a formal project plan format. Whether it was a small initiative or set of to do’s that just needed some framework or a major program that needed a […]
Connecting the Value Chain
Many of the recent Innovation success stories have been about the creation of new ecosystems which have created new customer value in a way that wasn’t imagined previously. The iPod and iTunes created an ecosystem of music which included the simple purchase, organization, and portable playback that previously took several steps and suppliers to achieve. […]
Sometimes The Unexpected Should Have Been Expected
Many times in our career, business, or life we experience unexpected events or twists in the road that catch us off guard. A big client pulls their business at a critical time, we find ourselves displaced from our job due to restructuring or cost savings, or we have a personal event that shakes the foundation […]
Innovate Everything
Most often when people hear the word Innovation it springs to mind images of high tech gadgets like the iPhone and iPad. For a smaller group of people it may also trigger images of service innovations like NetFlix or Starbucks. A few really creative folks might even register images of business model innovation like Google […]
fail to Avoid Failure
I often get quizzical looks when I suggest that the adoption of a failure acceptance mindset in an organization or team is one of the most critical factors in the success of an organization. I believe very strongly in the mantra put forward by design firm IDEO: Fail early and often to succeed sooner. IDEO […]
Skate Where The Puck Is Going
Unless you are just starting our in your business and have a completely clean slate you carry some baggage into each decision in the form of the outcomes of your previous decisions. That baggage sets the foundation for your future decisions and can take the form of organizational structure, staffing decisions, technology investments, brand image […]
The Application of Design Architecture
I was speaking with a new team member yesterday, getting to know them a little bit and providing a high level overview of the work and the team and he said something that made me think, and I haven’t been able to shake it. As a former developer he related the story of joining the […]