Return on management.
We measure return on the capital investments we make, there is an extensive, well understood, widely used set of tools that offer a framework for the calculations, most of us would be lost without them. However, whilst we all know in our guts that there is a set of...
Radical transparency
What you do, say and think is no longer private. Our lives are opening up to scrutiny as our previously private data moves into the public domain at geometric speed. Much of being human depends on our ability to forge relationships with a few people based on dreams,...
Marketing is demand generation
Sales forecasting is a common activity, you need to know how much revenue is going to be generated in the coming months. Usually it is done by sales, usually by a straight extrapolation with a few adjustments, and the only thing you know for sure is that it will be...
Seeing beyond the obvious
Innovation is all about seeing beyond the obvious answer, making the connections others miss, recognising cause and effect relationships differently. Most also accept that with training, our bodies perform better, we run faster, further, jump higher, etc. Surely it is...
Serendipity is rarely an accident.
"The harder I work the luckier I get" I'm not sure who said that first, but it is certainly widely agreed, absolutely true, and therefore almost a cliché. The more ideas, the more the variation in the background, training, and attitudes of those exposed and asked to...
Value adding ratio
Have you ever calculated yours? It is a pretty simple performance measure that carries a lot of weight, and contains the seeds of success, and destruction. In addition, if you know your industry well, it is pretty easily calculated for competitors, so acts as a useful...
Forecast Demand, not sales
Sales revenue is probably the most common senior management KPI, and is virtually always present for sales people. It is a very misleading measure. A friend, one of the best sales people I know, is in an industry struggling to reform itself in the face of direct sales...
The more things change………..
Comment on digital media, the opportunities, challenges, and pay-offs is largely made by people engaged in the business, and they are different. In a previous life, I dealt with a series of advertising agencies in the great days of the radio/mag/TV triumvirate of...
Corporate imagination and compliance
The interesting and fun bits of our world are driven by the vision, imagination, and execution capabilities of people. Much of the capital and technical capabilities required to enable these great things to happen are tied up in our corporations, governed by the...
Decision discipline
Making decisions is like any other process, you gather relevant information, consider options, look for the optimum outcomes, and decide accordingly. Right? Often wrong. Decisions are often made based on the HiPPO (Highest Paid Persons Opinion) what was done last...