Why not Organic?
An obtuse end of year thought, considering the problems the Government is having with its Green partner in policy. A convergence of trends, organic, free range, sustainable, all the other adjectives, food is all the rage, why not re-brand those horrid, smelly, carbon...
Thanks for hearing.
The hard part about writing a blog, I have found, is not finding stuff to write about, but finding stuff that has not been written about before, or finding a new twist on an old topic, and then being sufficiently interesting to those who so generously give you their...
Best management tool ever
The best management tool available is amongst the cheapest, a pair of shoes. Hierarchies are vertical, they filter and modify information as it goes up and down an organisation, but real things, those that customers pay for, get done in an organisation horizontally,...
Meritocracy, not democracy.
Meritocracy is about the best ideas, whereas democracy is about consensus, usually an average outcome. In a democracy, those who manage to smooth the waters, and gain the average usually get ahead, but in a true meritocracy, those with the best ideas get listened to,...
The challenge of the first
Ever thought about how markets happen, how the emerge, how they grow? A new market has to have a first customer, most marketers look to the value proposition, the competitive landscape, the distribution channels, the mechanics of manufacturing, the service offering,...
SME’s need to adapt or die
Being a supplier to FMCG retailers is really, really hard. The two gorillas are demanding, unreasonable, and often just plain stupid, at least that is a suppliers assessment. If you asked the retailers, they would just be doing their jobs, maximising the revenue and...
Collaboration and the cost of yesterday
Ronald Coase was first to recognise and articulate the economic relationship between individuals and the co-coordinating structures necessary to organise the work of individuals, coining the term "Transaction costs" in his 1937 essay "The nature of the firm" Coase...
Too busy!!
Busy, busy, busy, everyone is too busy to do anything important. We have had a reshuffle of the federal cabinet, busy people, dedicating limited time to gay marriage and other such important matters, a client of mine is so busy some the basic management stuff simply...
Retail hat dance
From bricks and mortar, to the web, and now to mobile apps. What is next for retailing? There was a blue last week between the current and previous MD of David Jones, about who wore the blame for DJ's being slow into e-selling, billionaire Gerry Harvey is often...
“2 X 1” strategy matrix
A variation on the classic Boston Consulting model of product portfolio management the classic 2 X 2 matrix, dogs, cows, stars, and, and, and, everybody forgets the fourth category. Usually it is depicted with a "?" in the matrix, and records those projects that are...