Do a Google search for the myth of multitasking and you’ll learn that it’s bad for productivity, bad for mental health, bad for concentration; it’s just bad all round. (If you are not convinced, read the top 5 results from the above search.) It’s bad because we aren’t really multi-tasking at all, we are switching… Continue reading Context Switching and Management

“There is no instant pudding” – so said W. Edwards Deming. What he was referring to was the human penchant to want to copy things that worked elsewhere in the belief that they would have the same results in your business. People wanting a formula for, in his case, ‘quality’. These days we call them… Continue reading When best practices are not best

In my nearly 40 years of employment I’ve been through about 10 restructurings. I have written many responses to restructuring proposals, and read many responses written by colleagues. Given the pain inflicted on an organisation, and the staff, is it worth it? It is my view that in most cases a complete organisational restructuring is… Continue reading Restructuring: What is it good for?

Whilst in search of excellence I discovered quality and in a zen-like process of discovery I reengineered my approach to projects and to work, eventually emerging out of the crisis, and discovering a new economics. Actually, the journey was longer than that and started with Business Process Reengineering (BPR). My employer at the time (RNZ) was in the… Continue reading Rethinking Agile

Today we were warned that SoundCloud might close within 24 hours. Late in 2015 (while at RNZ) I recommended strongly against hosting audio content solely on SoundCloud. Based on the numbers at the time, I predicted they would need to be acquired with 18 months to continue. We didn’t do it. I’d already built a… Continue reading It is not just about SoundCloud

In a previous post I shared about the identity crisis I had after being made redundant. I got a lot of feedback that the post was useful, and so I thought I’d share some things I found helpful while job hunting. While I was in the fortunate position of having a very public calling card,… Continue reading Tips for finding a job after redundancy

I have just finished reading Competing Against Luck, a book that outlines the latest thinking in Jobs Theory. That theory is built on a simple premise which, according to Clay Christensen, is: “When we buy a product, we essentially ‘hire’ something to get a job done. If it does the job well, when we are confronted with the… Continue reading What I Learned From Talking to my Customers

Update: I started work at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand in January 2017.  Early in November I’ll be leaving RNZ where, for the last 11 years, I’ve led the development of its award-winning digital platforms. Now, as they say, I’m open to opportunities. (richard@hulse.nz)  I’m looking for a position as a product lead,… Continue reading I’m looking for a new challenge!

This blog post is a written version of my presentation given at the ITx conference in Wellington on 13 July 2016. Introduction For the last 20 years or so I have been building new business tools at Radio New Zealand, mainly using Free and Open Source Software. These have ranged from a database for our music library, to… Continue reading Using open source to innovate online and save money

I recently posted the following comment on Facebook in regard to Russell Brown’s post on the apparent lack of good process in the procurement of IT systems for the now fnot-so-new Auckland super-city. The primary reason these systems keep being selected is that managers are unwilling and/or unable to manage the risks associated with large… Continue reading Government IT is broken, but can it be fixed?