Innovation, the Death of Email and Star Wars. My top posts of 2015

It’s slightly self indulgent to do an end of year review of your own posts , but I do find it useful to reflect what’s gone down well and what’s not over the past 12 months.

This has been a strange year for this blog as I started off posting quite prolifically before becoming far less regular. Partly this is due to also posting on other sites , partly a lack of discipline. I’m not a big one for resolutions but I do hope to establish a more regular pattern in 2016.

That’s if individually hosted blogs continue to have importance. The rise of platforms like Medium threaten to disrupt blogging itself – making the creation of smart looking posts accessible to anyone. The way the Medium recommendation system works means you can gather a following much more quickly than working solo.

Four of the six most popular posts this year owe their success to Medium and Slideshare. Maybe we are seeing the death of single purpose sites and a move to a more distributed network of content.

Here are the top six in reverse order (links attached):

6 – The future of work community and social housing
I’m pleased this post (originally written for inside housing) was successful as it proved there is a wider audience interested in social housing. If the sector would only stop talking to itself and balance worthiness with populism – we might finally see people sit up and take notice.
5 – Six ways to kill email 
For the blogger , email is the gift that keeps on giving. Everyone hates it but hardly anyone is doing anything about it. I broke up before Christmas with six mails in my inbox. There will be six on my return. There are some great ideas in the comments section on this one.
4 – How business planning and reporting can kill innovation
Despite the cheerleading for it , few companies demonstrate a strategic understanding of innovation. In fact it is treated the same way as everything else — whether it’s forecasting pension costs or estimating annual sick day. The necessity of accepting failure as part of innovation efforts is the main point of this post.

3 – Why change fails: four ways to hack your culture 

This year has seen an explosion in organisational change activists. But is focussing on change as an end in itself helpful? This post tackles the main culprit: toxic cultures.

2 – How to build an innovation lab

A post that became a big slideshare success , mainly due to the brilliant illustrations of Tom Hartland. You’ll see more of them in the forthcoming Bromford Lab ebook – which we are releasing in June 2016.
1 – 20 signs you’re probably not working for a social business

This post is actually from 2014 , but I (rather cynically) gave it a lick of fresh paint to coincide with the release of The Force Awakens. It was already popular before some Asian telecoms companies picked it up – sending the Slideshare views through the roof.

The deck shows a) everyone loves Star Wars b) we all have a heck of a long way to go before we can truly call ourselves social. And c) it’s always better to get your posts shared by others than to self-promote. Also a big shout out to the providers of the wonderful images.

Thanks to everyone who has viewed, supported, challenged and shared my posts this year.
I wish you all a very happy, healthy, prosperous and social 2016.

Paul