My wife’s book club might be the best club I sort of belong to. I read about every second book and eagerly attend the semi-annual meetings where they bring the husbands along. The discussions at these evenings are fabulous. In fact, a couple of years ago I suggested to the guys after hockey that we form our own book club. …
I owe this thought to my father and Quartet’s newest employee. My father worked in the food industry for most of his career and put himself through night school with three kids and a wife to feed. Very down to earth, he worked hard, had a great sense of humor and didn’t tolerate any sort of artificiality. Sunday dinners …
It’s early December again and again I know what will likely happen. I’ll work way too hard and enjoy the season way too little. Sometime between Christmas and New Year’s I’ll promise myself that next year I’ll slow down earlier and enjoy the season more. On the other hand, I’m blessed to be so busy right now and should take …
One day my wife called me at work to discuss yet another wild holiday idea and I guess I wasn’t paying much attention. When she pointed that out, I replied that we were having a “Dodgeball Day” and that I really couldn’t chat right then. That “Dodgeball Day” metaphor for work at Quartet haunted me for a couple years, but …
We’ve done something about communication at Quartet that I think you’ll get a kick out of. Our staff wear lapel pins that are one of four animals: a monkey, a turtle, a lion or a camel. The pins denote what sort of communication style the person favors and reminds us of the best way to communicate with them. For …
The Big Switch is a book that draws parallels between the electrification of North America and today’s cloud computing trends. Read it. It is way better than it sounds and that is not because I am a half-geek. It examines the potential impact on employment, privacy, social structures and politics and implies that George Orwell might not have been too …
The servant leader oxymoron embodies Quartet’s development challenge. The conflicting demands of being both a servant and a leader are difficult to manage, frustrating and often lead to compromise. This letter is about the nature of IT servant leadership and what Quartet is doing to meet the challenges. The majority of our new customers are mid-tier companies that depended …
My daughter and I were at the Leafs game when she made the mistake of asking me about values and relationships. My answer was simple and succinct: no one night stands. They are not worth it. Relationships are where real value lies and it’s worth the time to build them with the right people. You can’t make a relationship commitment …
Quartet’s approach to IT cost savings is simple, but works. We put “First Things First” as my father used to say. We start by lowering costs compared to what you are spending now. We leverage our hard skills, infrastructure, knowledge and tools to improve your efficiency. We follow with technical innovation that usually includes infrastructure rationalization and process re-engineering. The …
We launched Wireless Wolf services in May and argued that by managing mobile devices better, we would allow companies to save money and time. The response has been fantastic, but we only captured part of the benefit. Now we’re extending our Wireless Wolf services based on what we learned and introducing a Deployment and Training Service. We hope you like …