03 January

Medium to long-term planning has gone out the window
To summarise a number of conversations I’ve had recently, what many business leaders are doing can only be described as short-term thinking. Very few are planning for the next 12 months let alone any further. A COO I spoke to recently is struggling to balance a number of priorities and knows that, unless he and [...]

04:11 GMT  |  Read comments(2)

08 November

What does “professional work environment” mean?
Over the last two weeks, I’ve spent a little time with some new trainees at an accountancy firm. I have met many trainees during my working life – most are graduates, some will have worked for a time, or taken a gap year; fewer are 18 year old school leavers and, just occasionally, there’s a [...]

15:09 GMT  |  Read comments(4)

09 October

How does Learning and Development help facilitate business change?
I recently co-presented a session at the World of Learning Conference entitled ”The criticality of learning in delivering business change”. To me there are a few key issues to address if a change is going to be succesful to the business and L&D can help with this. A starting point is usually the business case. It may [...]

09:50 GMT  |  Read comments(0)

07 September

Customer service – who is the customer?
Whether or not everyone can agree on what is “good” or “great” service, we usually know what is poor service and who the customer is. But what about those services which involve some form of intermediary broker or agent – who is the customer? And, while I think of it, what’s the difference between a broker [...]

01:43 GMT  |  Read comments(0)

02 August

What’s “in the public interest”?
Having listened to a couple of discussions on the radio, I was struck by that phrase “in the public interest”, so thought I’d pursue the theme a little. According to the Press Complaints Commission’s Editors’ Code of Practice The public interest includes, but is not confined to: i) Detecting or exposing crime or serious impropriety. ii) [...]

01:40 GMT  |  Read comments(3)

30 June

Being assertive in the face of ….
Continuing on from the last post and the subsequent discussions I’ve had – mostly in LinkedIn discussion groups – there are a number of issues people face when dealing with others. The most common expressed issue is that “other people don’t behave the same way” ie they are either submissive/passive or they are aggressive. I [...]

01:09 GMT  |  Read comments(0)

21 June

Can a person be too polite?
In a recent discussion with a director, he said that one of his managers is “too polite”. Now, I’m all for politeness yet I don’t think there’s any such thing as “too polite”. The issue is, rather, that the manager is just not assertive – he’s not too polite, he’s submissive or passive, for example: when he says [...]

00:53 GMT  |  Read comments(0)

06 June

Diary of a consultant – week 3; wants vs needs
And so, what’s different about week 3? I’ve spent some time this week preparing for different client meetings and presentations and I’m reminded of one of the conversations with one particular client. One of next week’s meetings is with two directors of a company I’ve been working with for a while. My first meeting started [...]

05:25 GMT  |  Read comments(0)

16 May

Diary of a consultant – week 2; communication and collaboration
So, what’s different about week 2? I took a couple of interesting calls late on Monday - one from a “business partner” ie someone with a different product/service, looking at ways we can work together. I was reflecting that this isn’t that unusual – many conversations I have are with people with complimentary or overlapping services, not [...]

07:49 GMT  |  Read comments(0)

09 May

Diary of a consultant – week 1
  Blogs started as web logs – diaries of activities and personal musings. As I often explain what I do in a variety of different ways to a variety of different people, I thought I’d approach my blog in a different way for a few weeks and see if that helps to explain it a [...]

08:25 GMT  |  Read comments(0)