Are you good at doing things for the first time? There has certainly been a fair share of that this year and you might call that a beginner’s mind, but when I spoke to Copenhagen-based consultant Mathias Jakobsen, it quickly became clear that being good at doing new things is extremely valuable, takes special skills and that this whole ‘beginner's mind’ is a misunderstood concept.
Usually, an expert has done things thousands of times and has the experience to predict how things will pan out. Doing something for the first time is different. It clearly requires additional attention to what’s actually happening. Unlike a traditional expert, say an experienced accountant or HR professional, you can’t to the same degree predict the outcome. Observing and adjusting along the way is key.
Given what’s happened this year, where few predicted the pandemic, it only seems fitting to have Mathias Jakobsen as our expert of the month. You may like it or not, but 2020 has clearly made the strong case for a different approach and different skills.
Read moreThese are uncertain times, so allow me to start this community update by thanking you for being part of our shared journey.
Adapting Together has been our 2020 theme and it's all about going forward better. It’s human nature to adapt, but needless to say, the year has been quite tricky and challenging for most. Also for us as community organisers, but still, our continued learning doesn't need to stop.
Since our previous community update back in July, we’ve thankfully managed to keep the momentum going and certainly worked hard to stay relevant in strange and surreal times. We’ve faced quite some obstacles, but managed to do group meetings around Europe, virtual sessions with our North American members and even managed to do our in-person conference in Aarhus.
Follow me for a look behind the scenes at the last 6 months.
Read moreAccording to Sophia Zieger many organisations have a meaningless mission statement. Why is that and does it really matter?
In our recent member conference call, Sophia shared her perspective on the topic of working with purpose and asked some relevant questions like:
Can you measure the impact of an authentic mission statement?
What does purpose really mean?
How does the purpose impact us as individuals, employees, consumers and society?
Sophia is based in Dresden, Germany, and as a part of her role at software firm Staffbase, she works with HR and internal communicators to drive change.
Read moreStorytelling is more important than ever according to Aarhus-based Pernille Rahbech. Pernille just celebrated her 2nd anniversary as a solopreneur focusing on communications and in particular helping her customers tell stories and sell dreams.
Her small business still doesn’t have a website and she’s simply using her own name to brand herself, so she knows a thing or two about good stories and the importance of a strong network.
Pernille is based in Aarhus and has specialised on communication around major new construction projects in a new part of town and she is our expert of the month.
Read moreJust last month, Dropbox announced their plans to go Virtual First. This means that remote work (outside an office) will be the primary experience for all employees and the day-to-day default for individual work, also after COVID. It also means non-linear workdays and it’s Dropbox’s take on creating a sustainable, thriving workplace for the future.
In a recent member conference call, we heard from Marc Pazcian at Dropbox on what going virtual first means in practice and how this impacts creativity and collaboration. Marc is Solutions Architect and Cultural Ambassador at Dropbox DACH region. He's based in Hamburg, Germany.
Read moreHow do you really scale a product organisation? This is one of the topics we keep getting back to in our product management community.
Growing pains are familiar in the software business and product management is a key part of taking any product firm from the early stages to the next level.
In a recent member conference call, VP Product Derek Koch from Bay Area-based software firm Pointcare hosted a talk titled “Evolving Product in a Scaling Business”. Based on his vast experience, he shared how to best set the stage to enable and support growth in your company.
Read moreToday migrating a corporate website from one digital platform to another is a common and well-known exercise, but in recent years the projects have grown more complex, as it’s really often about migrating from one tech stack to another.
In other words, from being analogous to a behind-the-scenes engine change, these projects are today massive change projects with impact throughout the organisation.
At London-based publishing house Pan Macmillan, Technology Director James Luscombe and his team have been hard at work since March moving their website with bestselling fiction & non-fiction books from Kentico EMS based on Azure to a tech stack with Gatsby, Kontent and Netlify.
Read moreEven before COVID, there was a movement towards a renewed focus on how much the physical workspace matters. Not just software startups in the Bay Area, but also large, complex, global and old organisations were rethinking their office layout, asking for more flexibility and trying to cater to a more entrepreneurial mindset.
To Ulf Gaardsted which has been offering co-working spaces in Aarhus since the late ’90s, this also meant new customers arriving. Were traditionally small firms came for the facility sharing, community and perhaps really the parties, today larger firms are also looking for inspiring workspaces outside their own premises.
On the Future Workplace conference track at the Boye 20 Aarhus conference held earlier this month, Ulf shared his take on trends, 2020 learnings and his perspective on creating inspiring workspaces.
Read moreContent design and how it helps deliver successful digital products at Mastercard was the topic of our recent member conference call. Heading up the Content Design practice at Mastercard's Tech Hub in New York City Melinda Belcher shared her perspectives and made a fitting comparison to the UX space as a part of the conversation.
Her challenge is delivering content at scale and content design is clearly an emerging term that’s resonating with many. Let’s look at how they do it at Mastercard and what you might learn from it.
Read moreIt’s been over a decade since Berlin-based industry analyst Tim Walters famously said:
Content is king. Context is everything
While focusing on delivering good content and blazing-fast websites, buyers of content technology like content management systems or digital experience platforms has witnessed a dizzying level of innovation, new start-ups entering the crowded marketplace, and a neverending list of new terms like headless and JAMstack. It’s been quite far from the consolidation and commoditization predicted by analysts.
Some vendors have focused primarily on improving the authoring experience. To be honest, there’s still plenty of room for improvement in terms of getting content into the system. At the same time, many vendors have focused on the delivery part, making your website fast and accessible. Some with a more technical focus, others more from a marketing perspective.
What few have done, is looking at what I would call the middle ground. The actual composition of the experience. Deciding what content goes where, how the different blocks are placed together, reused and ordered. It’s the key to composing the best digital experience and Croatian digital agency Netgen has taken a stab at making it easier with Layouts - an innovative tool.
Read moreAt the recently held Boye 20 Aarhus conference, four software vendors competed in the 2nd annual Small Feature Award on showing a small feature with big impact.
Congratulation to Aarhus-based Ucommerce who won with an impressively simple approach to making e-commerce better.
Managing categories and changing the category structure can be a complicated process in e-commerce tools. In just about 4 minutes, we saw how easy it can be. The final touch, so to speak, that everything can be done using keyboard shortcuts pulled this contestant ahead of the pack to win the Small Feature Award 2020.
Read moreAnyone can learn a framework like OKRs for example, but to be the best product leader you need more than that. You need the strategic skills to lead without authority, to inspire and to empower.
This quote is from a conversation with Berlin-based product manager Lisa Mo Wagner. She talked about what it really takes to be a true product leader, she shared her take on the role of a product manager, being a part of building something super valuable and much more.
Lisa works as Senior product manager at Berlin-based fintech Finiata, is the organiser of Women In Product - Berlin and is our expert of the month.
Read moreAccessibility has long been the bad conscience of digital leaders, but in recent years it has gained increased attention in modern web development.
The Web has always been intended for everyone, so it's important we can meet the different accessibility needs of all users. Similar to GDPR, new legislation, a desire to avoid lawsuits, and bad press, are driving most organisations to ask for compliance.
In a recent member conference call, Gavin Colborne from Little Forest, shared what it takes to achieve the highest level of compliance - known as triple-A - as a brand.
Read moreChange is hard. Even if the outcome of change is known to be positive, convincing people to use new technology, follow different processes and work together differently is often met with questioning, resistance, and much sighing.
This is understandable because any worthwhile change takes a lot of time and effort, which can mean a lot of money too. Even if investing in change means gaining long-term efficiencies and economies of scale, it can still seem too daunting a prospect to commit to.
This is one of the greatest challenges with content operations - securing buy-in from leadership and getting the organisation committed to long-term change management.
Read moreWhat’s really the value of content? And how do we measure the impact and value of our work on improving the customer experience?
As I’ve previously shared, one of the major issues is that management often does not have an understanding of the value of content. The root cause of this is due to a lack of business schools teaching accounting systems that actually account for customer experience.
What follows is a little bit of history, a little bit of accounting nerdery, and maybe a tangent or two - but I do promise I will get around to explaining how organizations can start to properly account for customer experience and produce incentives around that topic.
Read more