Archive
supporting the front line doesn’t mean holding it up
I have been very lucky over the years in that I have been able to be part of some massive changes in the businesses for whom I have worked, from small parts in the early years through to influence and then responsibility. These days my role is usually one of influence because that is what mentors and consultants do (I can’t recall who said it, but I love the line about a consultant being like a castrated bull; he can only advise), but I do love the opportunity to get back into the trenches and do something. Read more…
put your own people first and let them handle the customer
I spend a lot of my life moving about, and have done since the early 80s. As a compulsive observer; it’s one of the ways that I have earned a living, I’m struck by how people behave towards each other. Read more…
asset management; a hard lesson
Asset management is very much at the forefront of my thinking at the moment, and in a very personal sense. It was about 4 weeks ago that I took a long look in the mirror and decided that I needed to apply some first principles to my main asset; myself. Read more…
you have what you’ve got: use it well and more will come
This wasn’t written with the financial crisis in mind, but, in proof reading it, it could well have been. My thoughts were more on developing teams and, because teams are made up of them, individuals.
If you lived in that ideal world of fluffy bunnies and blue skies then you could always pick your own team. Fortunately, at least for me, we don’t live there. It wouldn’ be much fun anyway as there would be no challenges, and so back here in the real world we will, as leaders, have to make something of what we have. Read more…
the joys(?) of cold calling
Last Thursday I blogged about a marketing company who would not stop cold calling me.
I am no stranger to cold calling; it was something that I, along with almost everyone else in sales in those days, did a lot of back in the 1970s. I did some more as recently as 2007 when trying to revive the fortunes of the business unit that I was attached to for nine months or so. Cold calling is a fact of life and it does, sometimes, work. Read more…
midweek musings on how to treat people that you’re trying to win business from
Last week I had a message that someone had called my office asking for me. They declined to give a reason for their call.
The next day they called again, and then again. I knew by now who the company was and, having looked them up on the web, knew that what they were offering was of no interest to my business, so when I got yet another message I rang them to ask them not to waste their time and money. Read more…
what’s the connection between the Mona Lisa and an FM?
I had been looking at a copy of the Mona Lisa and then the next day a conversation with a facilities manager then started this train of thought off.
The Mona Lisa contains a number of visual gags and one of the joys of looking at it is to spot these details, but any good painting, or photograph, or view will have all sorts of details that make up the whole visual experience. Just as it is nice to stop and smell the roses from time to time it is also good to let the eyes wander over something and feast on the smaller elements that you’ll find. Even something familiar can yield new things when you stand back and look. Read more…
chuck out your KPIs and measure real performance
Something that crops up constantly in the line of business that I am in is measurement of performance; often it is as simple as “Did we get what we ordered?” not least in terms of my clients being satisfied with me, but it is also about service contracts where delivery can get harder to pin down. I am in the process of writing a short eBook on the subject, so let me share some of my thinking here. Read more…
just how well do you communicate with modern technology?
In recent years we have begun to rely on emails, voicemail and text messages as primary methods of communication as we seek that immediacy of communication. Like me you probably know people who run more than one mobile ‘phone (maybe you do yourself?) and can’t bear to be out of touch. We seem to have developed an insatiable appetite for instant contact, but without any thought of the consequences. Read more…
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