Leadership Insights Blog by Peter Alkema

Anthony Hugo, a software programmer from RMB made this comment at last year’s event; it shows why the new models of motivation really work. Autonomy, mastery and purpose; these are the intrinsic factors of true motivation that Daniel Pink proposes in his excellent book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”. He also argues …

FNB Codefest: “Reminds us why we do what we do” Read More »

Technical craftsmanship must be co-located, showcased and rewarded to achieve real breakthroughs; spaceflight and banking are no different. NASA employs the brightest people on this planet so we can learn about other planets and even land on them. Elon Musk personally phones the top grads from Harvard, Yale and MIT to lure them into his …

FNB Codefest: The Moonshot Factory Read More »

FirstRand is hosting this crucial industry event on September 29th; it promises to make a valuable contribution to the growing community of DevOps practitioners in South Africa. The concept of a regular DevOps Africa conference was conceived by Josef Langerman of Standard Bank in order to create a platform for the local DevOps community. Standard Bank …

Africa DevOps Day 2016: Building skills for the next generation Read More »

The well known 4 social styles model is useful to understand “how” you interact with people; you can also use this model to describe the “what” of IT to different stakeholders. Driver, Expressive, Amiable and Analytical – these are the 4 behavioural styles that explain how people interact with eachother. Many leadership courses teach this interpersonal model to improve relationships, especially in …

Social Styles and IT: Beyond personal interaction Read More »

The coolest IT sprint in the FirstRand Group is going to new heights this year; join us to build, learn and share your cool stuff. At last year’s October codefest over 250 developers built 42 apps in a 6 day sprint from business ideation through to an intense dragon’s den including the FNB and RMB CEOs (see the …

FNB Codefest 2016: What’s happening? Read More »

The Agile Manifesto is not the 10 commandments, it’s principles; much like 50 shades of kid’s parties…. what? Software development is essentially a creative process requiring far more social psychology than many development methodologies allow for, even Agile ones. Some thought leaders argue that Agile software projects are like complex adaptive systems (CAS); related agents interacting in an environment of continually changing conditions. …

Being agile at becoming Agile, child's play right? Read More »

The first peer to peer tertiary IT education academy in Africa was launched last night in downtown Johannesburg; it was a celebration of talent, partnership and possibility. The launch was held in one of the oldest, traditional banking halls of 1940’s Johannesburg, now converted to a world class venue. The colonialist architecture of 87 Commissioner Street was from the …

Wethinkcode and FNB: #feeshavefallen Read More »

Real world banking IT experience, cool tech and talent development; it’s all happening at FNB’s 2016 Grad Programme. “moveForward(100);” was President Obama’s simple machine instruction at the 2014 Hour of Code event which also made him the first US President to write a line of code. Computer science education officially became mainstream (again) and he reminded the …

FNB.Grad_Programme(tech_success) Read More »

Exponential growth sets new standards and raises expectations by customers; many industries have been disrupted by this phenomenon and banking will be no exception. Transport, accommodation, retail and the media industries have all been disrupted by relatively new companies in a short period. Uber, Airbnb, Facebook and Alibaba dominate their markets with highly innovative and tech-savvy-customer-centric business models. They also don’t …

Banking and the real e-race Read More »

Start by understanding the risks and costs of cloud, how this model would benefit your business then assess what IT assets you want to migrate. Tesco Bank now views cloud as business as usual after a full migration in less than nine months. However cloud has struggled to make significant inroads in large banks due to issues such as availability, …

Banking and the cloud; don’t let the hype… well… cloud your judgment Read More »

What are the benefits and opportunities for IoT in banking; have we moved from buzzword to business value and how would it change the banking experience? Accenture’s 2015 mobility research surveyed 2000 execs across 9 industries in 15 countries; 89% believe IoT will have a major impact on their business. The banking perspective is likely to be …

Internet of Things (IoT) and Banking; helping customers bank better by extending the fintech ecosystem Read More »

Tech leaders – you will need to take your people to the next level in 2016; master your own journey first and LQ is a powerful lens. It’s the start of the year and the CIO has to master self before they can manage (or even lead) others. No matter what the demands of legacy, disruptive or enterprise …

Leadership Quotient for CIOs Read More »