Stories by Owen McCall

How to sell to a CIO

Before I took up the role of CIO at The Warehouse I was a partner with Deloitte Consulting. As with most professional services firms, my role was a mix of selling and delivering services to clients. Because of this, when I joined The Warehouse I was quite open to meeting with potential service providers to see what value they could add to us.
I was unprepared for the onslaught however. Every week I get a number of phone calls and emails from companies who have a great product or service to sell. When I respond to these calls I find that they never provide me with value for my time. As a result, I now work diligently to avoid all and any approaches from companies wishing to sell me something.

Written by Owen McCall24 June 09 22:00

One approach to strategy

“Forget the arduous, intellectualised number crunching and data grinding. In real life, strategy is actually very straight forward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.” Jack Welch
I love this quote. It captures so much of where I have ended up when it comes to understanding strategy. Not long after taking up my role as the CIO of The Warehouse I began to turn my mind to producing an IS strategy.

Written by Owen McCall07 April 09 22:00

Simple solutions for complex equations

There is a superb poem by Robert Fulghum about life called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It is a very simple and common-sense approach to life. Once you have read it you wonder why life is so complex. We seem to get some form of satisfaction and sense of self esteem by making things complex.
Did you ever hear someone boast that their job was so difficult, complex and important that they couldn’t possibly explain it? I often wonder about this. I mean really, if you can’t explain what you do how can you do it?

Written by Owen McCall14 Feb. 09 22:00