Business is hard – don’t forget the soft stuff

One of the things academics and `business gurus` people seems to forget from the loftiness of their academic or consulting perches when musing on leadership is that if someone is engaged in building just about any company or organisation is that they are likely to be very busy indeed. Actually not just very busy, but totally-life-consuming-frantic. Leading a modern, entrepreneurial organisation...

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The UK Business Leadership Crisis – Time for More EI in the HQ

The majority of UK organisations have concerns about their ability to fill critical leadership roles, with only 14 per cent confident about their` available talent pipelines`. This is one of the lamentable findings contained in recent research by Right Management resulting in a report, Talent Management: Accelerating Business Performance - based on a survey of more than 2,200 HR professionals. This...

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Fragrant Lies, Smelly Truths and Irritating Awesomeness

As an entrepreneur you have to do a lot of talking. However, the way you talk can seriously damage your chances of making a good impression in presentations, interviews or even in everyday conversation. That being so, I thought I'd list out some nasty spoken habits, that if you want to get ahead in business, it'd be worthwhile avoiding. Filler really is my pet hate, perhaps because it's so common....

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It’s PR Jim, but Not as We Know It

The title of this blog is, I admit, hardly an original play on Mr Spock’s supposed reply to Captain Kirk in the Star Trek series - ‘It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it’.  But, stay with me, it has a higher purpose. Although in one episode, Spock does refer to ‘no life as we know it’, the version now taken as characteristic of the Vulcan comes instead from being the hook in a 1987 novelty...

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Entrepreneur Know Thyself – How to Keep Ahead in the Market

Whenever I ask entrepreneurs to name their competition and they reply with `we don’t have any` I sigh silently and die a little inside. Having no competition is usually not a sign that you are a visionary genius. It’s most often a signal that others have already thought through your idea and discounted it.  Competition is actually the evidence that you are on the right track. But competition...

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