Field Notes

During October you will be bombarded with “help” to prepare for Brexit, from the DIT to anyone who wants to climb on the bandwagon. Having sat through DIT presentations and seen what other organisations are planning, I can save you a whole lot of trouble. All they will do is signpost you to https://www.gov.uk/find-eu-exit-guidance-business because, quite simply, nobody has a better guide, and nobody has any information on how it will

What is happening? From 14th September 2019 an update to the EU’s Payment Services Directive (known as PSD2) will change requirements for many online payments for customers in the European Economic Area (EEA). From this date, Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) will be required for online payments between businesses based in the EEA and customers based in the EEA. SCA requires two or more of the following elements to authenticate someone

Book Review: Graham Shaw: “The Speakers Coach – 60 secrets to make your talk, speech or presentation amazing”. You can add to that list: pitch, demonstration, lesson – or any communication where you want to attract, engage and inspire your audience. There are some lessons here that can be used in simple conversations too. I am a big fan of Graham Shaw. He is an expert at communicating visually –

“I slept like a baby” How come people never say “slept like a stressed out marketing director?” For the very good reason that often, adults don’t sleep so well and as a result their energy and performance suffer the following day. We invited Dan Collins, Team Facilitator and Sleep Coach to speak at our January techUK Marketing and Sales meeting to tell us how improved sleep can improve our performance

A colleague recommended I read “Black Box Thinking” by Matthew Syed. Not quite knowing what to expect, I did. And what a powerful message. A message about the value of learning from mistakes, and the critical importance of maintaining an organisational culture that welcomes the opportunity to learn from failure rather than punishing it. The title comes from the key example of the benefits of this approach. As you can

Despite the publicity, there still seems to be mystique and misunderstanding about the Data Protection rules (GDPR) yet the principles are very simple. So simple in fact that you could explain them to a child. The original terminology can be off-putting but let’s see through that to the seven key principles in Article 5 of the GDPR which guide data protection: If you borrow toys (personal information) you must play