Find out why the best organisations are getting back to basics
Oct 07th
There’s no room for flabby businesses today, even those that weathered the storm are cutting back on essentials. This month’s editor, Andrew Jackson, looks at what you can do to improve your bottom line. Read the full article Getting back to basics
Also featuring in the October strategy digest…
The bitter pill of spending cuts
How to successfully move up in the world
How to ensure your legacy
To receive your own copy of the monthly Inside Track strategy digest, register now at www.stantonmarris.com
We’re suddenly faced with the prospect of a coalition government. That seems a rather scary and unbritish thing. It doesn’t exactly smack of strong government (remember back to Margaret Thatcher ticking off one of her wet colleagues, Francis Pym, for venturing to suggest that a rather smaller conservative majority might make for better government and stronger Parliament).
But need we be so scared?
Look at the corporate world. It is full of examples of alliances and partnerships. Few companies exist completely as their own island. They depend on suppliers, retailers and the myriad of others who make up their value chain. They
The old adage goes: leadership development is a tough, laborious and lengthy process, and usually happens one person at a time. When tackling it, the industry norm is to plump straight for 1:1 coaching or small group leadership courses, which are more often than not costly ventures. But are they really impactful enough, how about challenging the norm and trying something different?
What do you do if you only have one hour to work with a leadership issue, and an audience of 1,000 people? You book a big theatre in the West End, work with actors to bring the leadership issue
Recently on TV a small feature caught my attention. It reported a rather surprising innovation being trialled in a secondary school in Kent which is using lessons on building ‘mindfulness’ to help the pupils be more aware of themselves and what is going on around them. The pupils themselves are already saying that it is helping them to focus more both in class and in their school work and achieve better results. The classes are simply exercises in ‘mindful meditation’
Mindfulness meditation is a Buddhist idea also known as ‘insight’ because the intention is to gain insight into the true nature
This is the question many business leaders are now asking themselves. The recession woke us up, forced us to evaluate our business propositions (a good thing in my view), prompted us to redefine our strategies for the changing marketplace and that is now bringing hard questions about our current talent into sharp focus.
I think it’s shown that in the good times we were much more focused on managing the talent we needed for today; attracting the best, developing and retaining the people that are critical to delivering results in the short term. And we didn’t have to worry too much
The board of a newly-merged business recently put ‘getting to know each other better’ at the top of their wish list for the board. Given their huge strategic agenda and complex business challenges, enjoying a board dinner or two together could seem like fiddling while Rome burns.
In fact, knowing each other as people is the basis for respect between board members, and respect is the basis of trust. Members of the board had instinctively latched on to the thing that would make most difference to them adding real value to the business.
Research shows that the conventional wisdom about what makes
It’s good for SMEs to have a number of people that they can call upon for advice and support.
A few years ago when my business was reviewing its proposition and strategy, we realised that we’d reach that age – and growth stage – when we would benefit from a fresh, external perspective: people who were prepared to challenge our thinking and help us reach sound market-based decisions.
We didn’t want people who would take on the formal roles of non-executives (though that of course may be the best option for many larger businesses); we needed people with whom we could share
I read with interest the recent MacLeod Review by David Macleod and Nita Clarke, in essence a comprehensive review of employee engagement. At its heart is a simple, clear message. Employee engagement does make a difference to business performance. There’s nothing new in that, but the real import of the review is the rallying cry it makes for a national awareness campaign.
That provides a real test for Peter Mandelson’s Department for Business Innovation & Skills. Can government show the imagination and skill to galvanise employers and leaders to put the lessons of this report to work? For if employee engagement
