The “Crucible Moments” podcast is a fascinating listen, especially as Roelof Botha (whose thoughts are the inspiration for this blog) isn’t the main subject. He plays the role of presenter; the main guest is Jack Dorsey (former Twitter CEO who now runs the financial services company Block). The central narrative of the podcast is the evolution of Block from its origins as Square, and how they created Cash App, a ‘third’ option, which is now responsible for half of Block’s revenue. The strategy of expanding the number of options for consideration was instrumental in helping Block identify and eliminate what wasn’t working and focus on more profitable projects.

Empowerment, autonomy, ownership – these buzzwords have rattled around for a few years now in relation to IT Project talent. Most project managers, business analysts (etc) would agree that they have the power to schedule their own time, track their own progress and tasks and choose how they work, to some extent. It usually leads to improved performance – after all who knows how to do a job better than the person who does it day-in, day-out?! What if you could take this improved individual performance and amplify it across your whole project or portfolio?

Despite the slow economy and provisional estimates which suggested lower mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity at the start of 2023, there were 365 mergers and acquisitions involving UK Companies during Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2023 according to the Office of National Statistics. There were inward M&A (foreign companies acquiring UK companies) in Quarter 1 2023 was £12.7 billion; and the total value of outward M&A (UK companies acquiring foreign companies) in Quarter 1 2023 was £2.9 billion.