Friday, 9 October 2015

Want to Drive Innovation? Focus on Cultural Nouse Not Technical Know-How

In all our firms we rely on staying innovative to beat our competitors and capture market share. But it's often assumed that it’s the application of science and technology per se that provides the `secret sauce` for differentiation and is the key driver of new product, process or service development success. This appears now not to be the case. Recently, a research study conducted by the University...

Wednesday, 15 July 2015

Want to Sell Your PR Firm? Avoid Developing a Case of PVVS.

It’s pretty well accepted that the skills and personality required to be effective in leading a start-up operation are unlikely to be the right tools the take the same company to maturity and/or eventual sale.  In the PR industry the failure of individuals to realise this maxim is inextricably linked to cases of Proprietorial Vanity Valuation Syndrome (PVVS)  It’s an industry where...

Friday, 8 May 2015

How to Win Friends and Influence People (in 2015)

I came across a post on LinkedIn the other day where someone suggested gushily  that the lessons in the seminal management/self- improvement work by Dale Carnegie ` How to Win Friends and Influence People` are as true today as they were when they were written in 1936.  Ever the contrarian, I thought I’d have a look through the shiny aphorisms highlighted and see if, in my experience,...

Thursday, 30 April 2015

Estate Agency - Is the Digital Devil Finally in the Details?

A few weeks ago whilst I was using this blog to muse on the reasons for the demise of Tesco and the lessons to be learnt, I argued, that, as business cycles quicken inexorably, many of the disruptors of the early days of the internet are already ripe themselves for disruption. But, I opined, there still are many from the `old` economy who remain supposedly `regulated` - protected by law - and are...

Tuesday, 14 April 2015

Hiring Today? Don’t CYA.

I’ve recently observed a series of hiring processes in firms from mature to entrepreneurial.  What these disparate firms had in common is that, despite claiming they had significant gaps in their capabilities and needed to hire fast, whatever the level of person sought the speed of the hiring process was glacial.   This sloth was routinely accompanied seemingly by the appearance of anyone...

Thursday, 2 April 2015

Tough Love, Freely Given - A Mentoring Manifesto

As the actor Kevin Spacey is oft quoted in a LinkedIn meme, `If you are lucky enough to do well, it’s your responsibility to send the elevator back down. ` I like to think I keep pressing the button. I like mentoring people.  I make no bones about it.  I get a kick out of helping raw talent quickly ascend to the highest positions. It’s become part of my DNA. But, I’ve learned recently...

Tuesday, 17 March 2015

Tescopalypse Now - Every Little Shouldn’t Hurt

The once all-conquering retailer Tesco has recently lurched from crisis to disaster*.  Stories of stores closing, share price diving, accounting scandals, criminal investigations, junk-rated credit and shrinking turnover and market share have been seen almost daily in the media.  As if this wasn’t enough it’s been accompanied by the unedifying sight of a long-time CEO, having timed his...