
Workday and Peakon. My take.
Workday agreed to acquire Peakon. There is an obvious logic to this deal. Engagement tools are an important part of HRTECH today, and the cycle of larger vendor absorbing edge innovators continues. Cue Disney circle of life music. Engagement tools have done well under COVID-19, with the move to more remote work etc. Whereas 2 […]

Lego, enterprise architecture and the job advert.
Who’s your pick for 2021? pic.twitter.com/j8iHnzPjyR — Ethics in Bricks (@EthicsInBricks) December 12, 2020 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js The brilliance of @EthicsInBricks and @econinbricks reminds me that the software industry should give the Lego metaphor a rest, we can’t compete. I won’t be talking here about how APIs are like the dimples on the lego bricks. I have […]
How not to work with HRTECH start-ups. The enterprise edition.
“Be cautious about generalizing, especially if it leads you to the conclusion that other people are idiots.” – Hans Rosling pic.twitter.com/4uGCLqk8vv — Economics in Bricks (@econinbricks) December 25, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Thanks to @econinbrinks. An excellent source of wisdom. When I was at Gartner I helped enterprises grapple with enterprise vendor contracts. I know several specialist […]

The difficult second album. Advice for HRTECH vendors.
Warning: long, rambling metaphor. Readers of my blog and twitter feed will have seen that I have an interest in music. One of my favourite albums is the first Stone Roses Album, The Stone Roses. I play this record a lot. Here is the song, Waterfall, from the album. The wikipedia entry is worth a […]

Three Deadly Sins of a Startup CEO
I have had the unpleasant experience of being involved with or hearing quite a bit of the blow-by-blow associated with the replacement of a CEO at one company or another. While I have not experienced the ultimate displeasure of being replaced myself (despite “ousted” rumors to the contrary!), I can tell you that it is a […]