The performance ideas blog

  • 5 things we can learn from professional athletes

    Here we are again. It’s that time of the year. We sit down and review our accomplishments for the year. And we are also starting to plan ahead for the next year. We craft plans and we get excited. Excited about improving our performance and the performance of our teams (apart from personal goals). Many…

  • Books, books & the Kindle

    This device is almost as polarizing as American politics. Crazy! I spend close to 200 days on the road per year and to me, this thing is the best thing since sliced bread…well…almost. I am talking about the Kindle – Amazon.com’s eBook reader. We are in the middle of the holiday season and many of us…

  • Cool software? The Connected Business – Part 3

    Yeah, those spreadsheets. Welcome to part 3 of this series of posts. An interesting special section in the Financial Times prompted me to post a quick summary with interesting quotes. But the report did not necessarily provide some specific details about why spreadsheets make our lives difficult. Part 2 then focused on the particular pain…

  • Spreadsheets Confidential – The Connected Business – Part 2

    The other day I wrote about the special section of the Financial Times called ‘The connected business’. One of the key take aways from this section was the fact that way too many finance departments are putting their faith into spreadsheets. A few years ago, my team started conducting some surveys amongst finance professionals. For…

  • The connected business?

    The Financial Times from December 8th 2010 included an interesting special report called “The Connected Business”. A bunch of great articles about technology in the office of the CFO. One thing that caught my attention was the fact that the entire section highlighted the problems caused by the use of spreadsheets. For people who work…

  • Behind the scenes – Middle East Cognos 10 launch

    Snow. Massive amounts of snow. And it’s really cold. Hmm…Do I really want to leave here? Greetings from Dubai airport. My colleague and I are stuck here right now. Most flights to Europe are delayed due to winter weather. Oh well….the joys of traveling. But this trip was really worth it. We just finished a…

  • Collaboration and BI?

    One of the first things we learn from our parents and teachers is that we are stronger when we act as a team. 1+1=3 or something like. And it is true! I have had some of my best learning experiences in a team environment. Every once in a while, we forget just how powerful teamwork…

  • Postcard from Moscow

    Greetings from Moscow! We just finished an incredible IBM Cognos Performance event. Over 450 customers spent the day to discuss the latest news in Business Analytics. It was a busy day for me up on stage: keynote presentation, two technical sessions and a press conference. Before I start repacking my bags for the next trip…

  • The power of Data visualization

    We all know that visual information display is more effective. But yet, we still create, run & analyze hundreds of thousands of flat reports. A survey from 2007 (CFO Executive Board) found that the average management report is 30-40 pages long and that it contains 12000 to 15000 data points. But only 5% of those…

  • The Speed of the Dragon

    The other day I met a good friend of mine. We hadn’t seen each other in a few weeks. But it felt a lot longer than that. A ton of stuff had happened. A sign of the times? The speed of business and our personal life seems to increase steadily. The economy already feels like…

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