Strange Shape: Recent Episodes
Strange Shape
Musings of Mike Butler and friends on a variety of topics but mainly Resilience, Mental Health & Motorcycles!
I was delighted to talk to two of my favourite digital content creators/story tellers/trainers. For a while I've been obsessed with making dry topic training interesting. When it comes to risk and controls and in some cases the techie and seemingly irrelevant spectre of cyber threats to individuals this really proves to be challenging. So many of us have been forced to 'click through' unmemorable training just to make sure we don't appear on the naughty list. So what's the value in this training if nobody takes key messages away?
Ian Murphy from CyberOff has been making superbly memorable and accessible videos on Cyber threats. He brings the concepts to life in a truly memorable way! You can't help but come away from the viewing both better educated and wanting to wash your eyes and ears out with acid. ;-)
Simeon Quarrie from Vivida has been bringing more and more innovative training to the Security sector with a niche focus on Cyber for the last few years. We have worked together for years on some super cool initiatives including bring virtual reality Crisis Management and Cyber Response training to the masses.
I would encourage anyone looking for stand-out training to contact Ian & Simeon to see how they can help you and your organisation! Obviously mention me so I can get some free swag from them including hopefully a tee with Ian as Vanilla Ice on it! 😂
Some key links:
My blog: https://www.strangeshape.com/
Vivida: https://vivida.io/
Simeon Quarrie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simeonqua...
CyberOff: https://www.cyberoff.co.uk/
Ian Murphy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianmurphy/
vlog #blog #cyber #resilience #operationalresilience #training #innovation #80srappers #awareness #podcast #education #storytelling #visual #virtual
I was so happy to chat to Ryan Roadkill who is one of my favourite artists & illustrator! I own t-shirts, pins, stickers, hats, pictures and books with his artwork. I also have a Porsche 911 bonnet ready to be adorned with a unique commission at some point post lockdown!
We weaved through how he started getting into art, what inspires him. How much of his work is commissioned vs his own inspiration, digital art and a few other things. Basically the journey he took JUST to become my favourite artist. 😎
Please follow him on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/ryanroadkill/) and buy loads of stuff from his site (https://www.ryanroadkill.com/) or from the Bike Shed Motorcycle Club (https://bikeshedmoto.com/collections/caps/products/bsmc-dead-dakar-doug-cap-black) or from Hebtro (https://hebtro.co/product/beer-mat-pack/) or StolenSpace (https://www.stolenspace.com/product-category/ryan-roadkill-originals/) or Hermanus (https://www.hermanusbruges.be/product-page/garage-rock-english) or wherever you can find his stuff!
art #ryanroadkill #ryanquickfall #motorcycleart #coolart #cool #digital #bold #illustrator
Cyber Resilience gets mentioned often and as with ‘Resilience’ there are often a million and one definitions of it! I got together with Will Dixon, the head of Cyber Security for the World Economic Forum and explored what it is! Is it:
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A Cyber Recovery Vault to guard against Ransomware? Or is that snake oil?
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Just another scenario for Operational Resilience to design for? Or is that applying an old school lens to it?
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A culture and controls within a company to minimise the likelihood of a successful Cyber attack? Or is that just a BAU CISO role?
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All of the above? Or none of the above?
Will and I meander around the topic and hopefully you find this discussion useful in your own discussions about how to prepare your organisation for the Cyber threats of the now and the future.
More on Will here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-dixon-b331b410a/
Check out strangeshape.com for other articles, videos & podcasts!
cyber #resilience #worldeconomicforum #wef #cyberresilience #operationalresilience #risk #vault #culture #company #security #ciso #davos #strangeshape
Towards the end of ‘Lockdown 1.0’ in the UK, I wrote an article on Location Independent Working and concluded that:
“Could I work from home and never go to an office? I could probably do my job effectively but it wouldn't do my mental health any good!
Is the new way of working the right thing for society and planet earth? IMHO (one for the kidz): YES!!”
We’ve now been through various tiers lovingly known as Lockdown 1.1, 1.2, Christmas, Lockdown 2.0, Lockdown 2.1 ‘The Revenge of the Virus’ and now Lockdown 3.0 ‘The Rise of the Vaccine’.
I got together with Richard Bell to return to the topic and see what we thought now and whether my views still stood.
Nick Hussey who is a co-founder of FRAHM (who make awesome jackets by the way - I have 4 and counting), posted about how some recent changes in his ‘environment’ led to spikes in anxiety. In a sense he was chipping away at his tripod legs (thanks Nikita Gunnewegh!) and filling his anxiety buckets.
Just after Christmas, my great friend Mike O’Brien and I decided to record one of our usual weekly catch-ups! The brief was that I’d interview him and we need to try not to swear or go down too many esoteric rabbit holes!
We covered a bunch of stuff including:
- Starting up his own company and growing to over 120 employees at the start of 2021
- Anti sales culture
- Cat cafes and entrepreneurship
- The power of serendipity to grow business
- Being a good human in a competitive marketplace
- Building a good human culture and motivating a workforce during COVID19
- Maintaining the start-up feel in a scale-up
- Meeting while walking
- Being an authentic leader
blog #vlog #podcast #northeast #newcastle #software #company #covid19 #employer #uk #northumberland #chat #catcafe #entrepreneur #innovation #extremesports #skateboard #skateramp #snowboard #mountainbike #bmx #beard #checkedshirt #flannel
I hope you enjoy it!
I spoke to the inspirational Nikita Gunnewegh about mental health including touching on her and my own experiences with mental health issues. We both hope that this podcast, albeit long, will help those experiencing mental health issues but also those who want to help people with mental health issues.
We cover:
- What is mental health?
- Does change impact mental health?
- Has COVID helped or hindered?
- What can trigger mental health issues?
- How can you tell if you have mental health issues?
- How can you help yourself or others?
- Is there a stigma and how do we break it down?
Key links:
Anxiety Buckets Blog Post: https://www.strangeshape.com/blog/9c2ssie61sphzgar3jlxfvgxm787ml
Mike Butler: http://linkedin.com/in/mikebutler
Nikita Gunnewegh: http://linkedin.com/in/nikita-gunnewegh/
Movember: https://uk.movember.com/mens-health/mental-health
Mind: https://www.mind.org.uk/
Sanctus: https://sanctus.io/
Paper Journal: https://www.mindjournals.com/
Virtual Journal: https://daylio.net/
MentalHealth #BrokenHead #Wellbeing #Anxiety #Stress #Depression
I brought together Ben Bowers (instagram.com/iambenbowers & linkedin.com/in/benbowers) and Toby Kent (linkedin.com/in/tobykent1) to explore Resilience holistically. They bring personal experience and insights to Personal Resilience & Community Resilience respectively whereas I focus more on Operational & Organisational Resilience for corporates and the macro-economic impact.
What unfolded was a great chat for over an hour exploring the similarities, relationships and themes between these important areas. I chat about it more in my related blog post:
https://www.strangeshape.com/blog/resilience-ecosystem
Inspired by Simon Sinek’s TED talk on ‘Start With Why’, I tried to start with why for ‘Operational Resilience’ for a UK Retail bank. What’s the ‘Golden Circle’ of Why/How/What?
No mammoth post this time - just a video!
Everyone has an anxiety bucket. Sometimes it overflows. Sometimes it leads to lifechanging events.
I was talking alongside Marcus Wildsmith from Cutover, Rick Cudworth from Deloitte and facilitated by Mark Heywood on the topic of: Maintaining Operational Resilience while delivering at pace. This was part of the DRJ Fall Conference in September 2020.
More here: https://www.strangeshape.com/blog/getting-better-at-failure-failbetter
Resilience #OperationalResilience #Webinar #RoundTable #Zoom #ServiceManagement #Education #BusinessContinuity #Vlog #ITDR #Recovery #Disaster #Crisis #Incident #FailBetter
Between Lockdown 1&2, Ky Nichol (the CEO of Cutover) and I sat down and had a chat on all things resilience from how culture is key, adopting technologies such as Chaos Monkey to embed continuous resilience testing would be a leap forward and that resilience is a way of doing things! If your runbooks for change, resilience & run are different then you are not resilient.
With the move to electric, the custom scene will also need to evolve. It's likely that instead of new carbs, headlights, frames, a tool chest full of spanners and 10mm sockets that our tool chest will be a 3D printer/CNC machine and a laptop. Interestingly, this is likely to open up the custom scene to the next generation of custom builders. The console generation won't see themselves customising their bike but instead will be hacking their bike!
For years large companies have really struggled to adopt 'Working from Home' (WFH) at scale and in some sectors/companies there has been a deep mistrust about not being able to see your staff/colleagues. 'How do I know they are working if I can't see them'? This reminds me of the old clock-watching mentality of the 80s/90s and the stereotypes in some cultures of never leaving before the boss.