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When crazy meets brilliant…
I had lunch today with one of the most creative people I’ve ever met. But this post is not about creativity, unless you think of it as creative decision-making. I want to share an anecdote he told me over that lunch, in the hope that it resonates with you in the same way it did me. The story is a true one but I’ll maintain anonymity. It concerns a particular manufacturer that regularly purchased a certain widget as part of their production process. They procured this widget from a supplier that was situated about 50 miles from their own...
read moreThe real driver of business growth and why you MUST understand it
Engagement is a buzz-word in the business world just now. However, I suspect many business owners and managers don’t quite understand it, or worse, feel they are already doing it – when in fact they are not. Last week I attended the Best Companies awards dinner for small businesses and social enterprises, in Battersea. Best Companies has been in existence for 13 years and all of the UKs top organisations are desperate to top their list, which is published annually in the Sunday Times. This list is special because it is assessed on the...
read moreWhy “100%” is the percentage of choice for highly successful businesses
There should not be a business, in any corner of the world that does not recognise the importance of customer satisfaction. Yet there is one aspect to measuring customer satisfaction that I believe many business owners and Directors do not recognise because it’s to do with “statistics”. I was fortunate yesterday to be in a meeting with a British organisation that, for the most part, get their customer satisfaction right and are well loved by many because of it. Nevertheless I shared with them my theory and they recognised it as...
read moreHow to Dramatically Increase Business Performance in Three Simple Steps
A key common denominator across all businesses, irrespective of sector, size or location, is the need to raise performance. Performance in sales, production of widgets, debts managed, customers satisfied…the list goes on. So if raising performance is business critical to all organisations, why is it that so many of them are so bad at making it happen? Numerous textbooks, hypotheses and research projects exist to specifically address this very issue. Yet no matter which different angle you take, it really does boil down to just three very...
read moreEliminate conflict resolution in one simple step
I’ve always been a bit sceptical of psychometric testing. Many of us will have completed them at some point in our lives. A few years ago, I was part of a team that completed a particular type on the basis of answering just 25 questions. Initially, I was quite impressed. I could see a lot uncanny statements of truth in the twenty or so page report emailed to me, defining every aspect of my personality. Until, that is, I read a colleague’s report and realised I could draw equally similar conclusions from his! Was this just a very well paid...
read moreOne little word that is football PR suicide…
Only an avid fan of international football will have heard of Mauricio Pochettino until he arrived in the UK this week amid a minor furore. He is the new manager of Southampton FC, following the sacking of Nigel Adkins, a controversial decision given his popularity and achievements. One quote I read from the new man has stirred me to write this. Now I’ve stopped being surprised at the decisions made within football these days. Like the majority of people, I feel it’s become a largely poisoned sport, put to shame by the Olympics in 2012....
read moreThe high street is dead, long live the high street!
The UK has a huge issue to deal with right now. No not the NHS. Not Europe. Not even the public debt crisis. It’s our high streets. As we all know, they are dying a slow painful death. Most of us would like to see them saved; however, when push comes to shove, we tend to put our sentiment to one side in favour of convenience. Instead we shop at the supermarkets. We shop online. And we shop in out-of-town retail parks. In doing so, we’re slowly but surely hammering the nails into the high street coffin. I’m not making a moral judgement;...
read moreThe only 5 pages a business plan really needs
The conventional format of a business plan typically results in an extravagant and largely futile waste of precious time for most new business owners. The fact that most business plans are written for an external authority to rubber stamp, typically the bank manager, seems nonsense to me. More than that, it immediately imposes an overtly optimistic bias onto the business. It is only natural to present the bank manager with a positive vision of the future. Breakeven must be demonstrated within one or two years otherwise he/she will surely...
read moreHow NOT to treat your customers!
In my book ‘Selling Moose’ I devote a whole chapter to customer service. Sadly and extraordinarily, poor customer service seems to present itself all too frequently, in all areas of life. We’ve all experienced it countless times. Yet it seems so many people in business just don’t get it. Nobody likes getting ripped off. One particular sector where we tend to feel short-changed on a regular basis is short haul airline flights. The weird thing about this industry is that it began as one of the greatest pricing revolutions of all...
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