Leadership Insights Blog by Peter Alkema

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 »

The South African born, billionaire mega-techpreneur is actually human – but you might not think so after reading Ashlee Vance’s superb biography. We often think we know someone better after we read a book about them; Elon Musk’s multi-industry disruption, highly complex persona and unbelievable tech smarts destroy this theory. He is incredibly difficult to …

Elon Musk; the Iron Man stars in Back to the Future Read More »

Africa DevOps Day was hosted by Barclays in Johannesburg recently; I spoke about experimental agility at scale using the recent FNB CodeFest as an example. DevOps seeks to drive increased levels of collaboration between developers and operations; much like the way Agile values “individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. In his talk, Thomas Enoch …

Agile and DevOps, Cousins of Collaboration Read More »

The EY Strategic Growth Forum in Johannesburg grappled with how technology is disrupting banking; as a panelist in the forum I offered insights on some key questions. New entrants, new tech, new thinking – what does this mean for the industry and how well are banks responding? FNB’s Innovators Programme continues to drive a successful culture of disruptive thinking …

Technology and Banking Disruption: Level playing fields or new rules? Read More »

Top 3 takeaways: Agile environments in large organisations are unique and require effective leadership from management Management operates on transactional leadership; creates conflicts with Agile principles of empowerment It is possible for Agile teams to influence upwards; it is possible for management to adopt Agile successfully Slide 1 – Leadership is everything that comes to mind when …

“Leadership and Agile” – My zero-text slides from Scrum Gathering 2015 Read More »

Three more ingredients for the secret sauce of a “mind blowing” event; team coaching through the night, exec sponsorship (and exec dragons) and world class tech support. Last week the second FNB Codefest saw 250 developers converge for a multi-day sprint to work on over 40 business sponsored ideas of which the winner was a kids …

FNB CodeFest: Highlights from the coolest IT sprint in the FirstRand Group – Part 2 Read More »

“I was blown away by the energy and progressive thinking … world leading … streets ahead”; these comments from a business colleague after our second FNB CodeFest last week, read on to see why he felt that way. No matter how well you plan something or bring an expert team together, there’s a special magic …

FNB CodeFest: Highlights from the coolest IT sprint in the FirstRand Group – Part 1 Read More »

It was all about collaboration, ideas taking shape, latest technology and techies talking shop; a perfect day out of the office in other words. One of the ways we made this codeFest bigger than the previous one was a full day set aside for setting up technical environments. This time we made sure that all the …

FNB codeFest Day 1: Successful Team Set Up Read More »

Our IT department recently took a spinning class at work; it boosted our heart rates and illustrated a powerful concept of teams. The link between exercise and knowledge work is well established; stay healthy and your productivity should be higher. The general sense of wellbeing that accompanies regular exercise has also been shown to improve results. …

Spinning our way to IT health Read More »

Day 0 of the second FNB codeFest was held recently on Spring Day; our theme was the green shoots of ideation. It’s been said that Thomas Edison figured out 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb; all his attempts still contributed to the one that changed the world. Fintech ideation is a lot about disruptive thinking to find …

FNB codeFest Kicks Off on Spring Day Read More »

It’s the difference between thriving and surviving; big business and government also have a crucial role to play. I participated in a panel debate at the Innovation Summit in Cape Town today where we discussed the importance of “enabling ecosystems for innovation.” As a banker I had already been told earlier in the day that …

Do techpreneurs need an ecosystem that supports innovation? Read More »

Prototyping new technology is exciting and important but speeding up current projects is equally valuable to business. A colleague emailed me this week about the next FNB codeFest which is being held 28 Sept – 2 Oct. She explained her team was keen to get involved but it would put strain on a big release that was …

Codefests should also accelerate in-flight projects Read More »