After a huge amount of thought and procrastination, I’ve taken on a new employee. The good news is that even our current Chancellor hasn’t found a way yet of charging National Insurance on this one. The other advantage is my new employee is cheap (less than £1 per day) and…
Fear of failure often means that making a decision to do nothing and stick with the status quo is the safest thing to do in the short term, but will nearly always result in long term trauma. The problem is that too many people take decisions based on the “if…
Much has been spoken and written over the years about leadership, and it is pretty much acknowledged that effective leaders are not as common as they should be. Leading a team of diverse individuals has always been difficult and, in truth, is getting more so. Just to add petrol to…
It’s a phrase I use too often with clients but it is still very powerful. Too many businesses work on the basis of “here’s the solution, what’s the problem?” Good businesses know their customers well and understand what they really need, and effective businesses sell what their customers need. The…
For many it is about to be the beginning of a new financial year and hopefully they will have plans in place looking forward, but how many of those plans really look forward? You see, plans based on past experience are no longer effective. When I was but a boy…
Be careful about being too efficient. Only doing things that are shown to be efficient rules out those events that by chance may end in a happy or beneficial way. Being effective sometimes requires serendipity. The 80:20 rule is sufficiently famous that we don’t need to pursue it here although…
We have all read about, and / or taken part in team meetings, and they can be good or bad. Many organisations have the regular team update meeting, either face to face or virtually, but how many of you have an effective team meeting with yourself? If you are the…
In the past the acquisition of knowledge was critical. We even had the saying “knowledge is power” but that is no longer the case. Anything you want to know is just an internet search away. As AI increasingly becomes part of our lives all knowledge, and even the interpretation of…
The problem with most productivity measures is that they measure what is measurable rather than what really needs to be measured. That’s why so much is spoken about productivity, and so little is done to really improve it. With that in mind what is the difference between productivity and effective…
The Stoics really understand control. You may have a desire to control others, but in reality you can’t, you can only control yourself. The trick therefore is to effectively control yourself, not others. Bad managers and even worse, bad “leaders” believe the solution to dealing with people is to try…