If you have ever found peformance issues and the reasons being given seemingly incredibly complicated, then perhaps distilling the essence back to the number only may be the answer you are looking for. For example, let’s say sales performance is down. A person can provide any number of reasons, incredibly well argued, as to why […]
Have you ever experienced the debilitating situation of not knowing what decision to make in a difficult circumstance? Or found yourself overwhelmed by the sheer volume of email and interruptions within your workday? In case of the former it is caused by uncertainty (not enough facts) and a less than comfortable risk of decision failure. […]
Business and leading people can both be hard and easy. Getting stuck in a mental rut is also easy, and no wonder as making a similar decision based on past experience makes a lot of sense. It saves time, allows you to move onto the next task. But it also can increasingly become dangerous without […]
If you are in a professional services firm, then one of my favourite books is called Managing the Professional Services Firm. The book describes what to do when you have extraordinarily bright people, smart consultants, who know what they should be doing – but just simply aren’t doing it. The book covers so much more […]
George Negus, who actually isn’t all that fond of being referred to as an aging sex symbol, gave a presentation in Perth at the wonderful venue of the Royal Perth Yacht Club. He was discussing many things and was thoroughly entertaining, and at the conclusion of his speech answered some questions. I had my hand […]
I really enjoyed my early career in direct marketing. One of the things I found interesting was determining which promotional ideas would work and which wouldn’t. The idea was to spend only what was necessary to effectively acquire a customer, and to make the communication as targetted as possible. We’d use promotional giveaways as relevent […]
“You didn’t make that up. I heard that / saw that / wore that 20 years ago….” One of the art directors I used to work with when I was in the advertising industry commented on retro styling. His observation was that new designers would explore new and different concepts for a goodly part of […]
In a meeting today I was talking with a client who has a particularly dry sense of humour, and a great philosophical perspective on ensuring successful delivery of projects. We were talking about change management. His simple and insightful comment was this: “You have two tools you can use for change management – they are […]
Today I was trying to explain why organisations sometimes almost compell their managers to do stupid things – or certainly why it might appear that way to people further down the chain. 1. The glance analysis – the solution to someone else’s problem can often seem obvious. That can be due to the person not […]
I don’t there is a great parallel for business other than when your confidence is up, and you are well prepared, you are unbeatable. Similarly if your confidence is down, you are unwinable. Anyway, Bill Daring calls from the UK. “Bill, so… I don’t follow the cricket, how are your boys doing?” – knowing full […]