Building Better Solutions with Software

Organizations have evolved into complex organisms with nearly unlimited specialization of tasks and data. Unfortunately, the resulting management and decision-making driving this complexity often create unwanted inefficiencies and training problems. Too often, teams find a large amount of tacit knowledge embedded in the heads of a few rather than available to all. Even more damaging to a culture is the widespread use of technology, tech that is just too difficult for the average contributor to reach self-sufficiency. At the core of the challenges people face is the constant reminder of the overall complexity of what they're trying to accomplish, masquerading as features and enhanced sophistication. What is missing is an adaptive experience, allowing most users to interact with the simplest of functionality they need to do their jobs. Such adaption applies to more than address accessibility issues for disabled users. It extends to machine learning and modular interfaces that can abs...

Organizations are self-contained ecosystems of talents, priorities, and processes. Yet, too often, the technology created to support one team is so vertically refined that it offers little process or data connectivity to other teams that depend on these interactions. This siloing effect is a natural consequence of the specialization that happens within enterprises, but it is far from being a healthy one! Today, organizations depend upon speed, efficiency, and a high degree of accuracy to compete successfully. Those who do the best have learned to crush these silos by interacting more effectively without specialization's barriers. However, connecting teams effectively requires more than the proverbial single source of truth that many strive to achieve. A measurable milestone in this effort must include mutually working within a well-defined process. When considering the typical ways enterprises attempt to overcome silos, we often refer to a duct-tape approach. This technique require...

July 2005 was a crushing month in my life. I discovered my wife unresponsive in our bed early one Sunday morning. After my resuscitation efforts failed, I was immediately aware that my life would be forever changed. Sure, my wife had been sick, but never in my wildest imaginations would I have thought a young, vital 39-year-old woman could be taken from life so early. Grief, confusion, even anger dominated my every thought. How would I raise my four daughters? How could I continue to run my company? Could I ever come to feel peace and joy again in my life? A couple months later, still marred by the events of the summer I decided to join my brother and friend on an early morning summit of Mount Olympus, a key peak along the Wasatch Front Range in Salt Lake City. I believed the climb would be strenuous and demand all my strength and resolve, especially given we planned a near sprint to the summit. Being over ten years, their senior had me questioning if I could pull it off. We left a few...