Posts with a business element
Over 2500 years old, this is one of my favourite leadership quotes. Empowering others, rather than self glorification, lies at the heart of real leadership – try telling that to some of the big business egos! To lead people, walk beside them… As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The …
Say what you're going to do Do what you said you'd do If anything goes wrong, as quickly as possible, let people know what happened, the consequences & what action you're taking. In other words return to 1 and repeat. This is one in an occasional series of short thoughts on the question "What …
For pretty much all of the 30+ years that I’ve been in business, I have employed the power of collaboration. Before I did what I do now, I ran an engineering business based in Kent. It was my family business, I was the fourth generation of my family to work in it, and I started …
Unleash the Power of Collaboration in your business (& I’m not talking about software) Read More »
Have you noticed how people often fail to take best advantage of the opportunities they have in life because they are fearful of the consequences? Or rather, they are fearful of what they think the consequences might possibly be in some kind of worst case scenario, that they create in their heads. I know I've …
A while ago, on the train into work, I overheard a man sitting opposite me make a phone call. Now, I don’t make a habit of listening to other people’s conversations, but as you probably know, it’s not always that easy not to overhear them on the train. He was evidently speaking to a colleague …
In his excellent recent book "59 Seconds: Think a little, Change a lot", Professor Richard Wiseman describes research done in the 1990s into the effect of praise on children. The investigation carried out at Columbia University involved over 400 children between 10 and 12 and from a range of backgrounds. The key finding of a …
Following on from yesterday's rant about bad/ineffective/authoritarian/bureaucratic/secretive (call it what you will) management, I thought today I would be rather more constructive and put forward some proposals about how to become more effective in the way that you manage. It's about developing a style that I am going to call Managing with People, and if …
I spotted this article on the Chartered Management Institute web site, reported in the Financial Times last week: "A new survey of the workforce (5,000 adults surveyed by One Poll) highlights the three most common management styles within UK workplaces as authoritarian (according to 21 per cent), bureaucratic (16 per cent) and secretive (12.5 per …
I've been continuing to think about the whole thing of trust since my post on Tuesday, There seems to be a huge surplus of lack of trust around these days (Can you have a surplus of a lack of something? – anyway, I hope you know what I mean). We don't trust politicians – they …
I just came across this article on TechCrunch – an interesting question, and one on which I have some fairy strong views. Here are some of them: I certainly believe Entrepreneurs can be made – or rather, that they make themselves. It's a choice that people make at some point in their lives – …
