No. 1 Business Book in the World, According to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett

Bill Gates met Warren Buffett for the first time in 1991, and one of his first questions was which business book Buffett recommended most highly. Buffett had the answer ready, and Gates apparently took it to heart, since 23 years later he wrote about it--"The Best Business Book I've Ever Read"--on his blog. What is this masterpiece?

It's called Business Adventures, by John Brooks.

Read the article over at Inc here.

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Why Madge Networks, the token-ring company, went titsup

There I was shooting the breeze with an old mate. The conversation turned to why Madge Networks which I wrote about here went titsup. My analysis is that Madge Networks had a solution and decided to go out and find a problem. They deferred to more incorrect strategic technology choices. The truth of the matter is that when something goes titsup, its not because of one reason only, but a myriad of them all contributing to the negative consequence. There are the immediate or visual ones, which are underpinned by intermediate ones and finally after digging right down, there are the root causes. There is never a singular root cause for anything but I'll present my opinion and encourage everyone else to chip in. All of them together are more likely the reason the company went titsup. As far as technology brainfarts go there is no better example than Kodak . They invented the digital camera that killed them. However, they were so focused on milking people in their leg

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A checklist for troubleshooting network problems (22 things to catch)

Assumptions! What is really wrong? Is it the network that is being blamed for something else? Fully describe and detail the issue . The mere act of writing it down, often clarifies matters. Kick the tyres and do a visual inspection. With Smartphones being readily available, take pictures. I once went to a factory where there was a problem. Upon inspection, the network equipment was covered in pigeon pooh! The chassis had rusted and the PCB boards were being affected by the stuff. No wonder there was a problem. In another example, which involved radio links. It is difficult with radio links to remotely troubleshoot alignment errors. (I can recall when a heavy storm blew some radio links out of alignment. Until we climbed onto the roof we never realised how strong the wind really was that day!) Cabling. Is the cable actually plugged in? Is it plugged into the correct location. Wear and tear on cabling can also not b

Thinking problem management!

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