Lessons from Shakespeare
Many companies face the challenge of commercial sustainability in mature markets, with declining patronage, increasing costs, and often a fatalistic view of the future. Last year, I went with a couple of my kids to a performance of 'A midsummer nights dream" in the ...
Instinct Vs analytics
We all find ourselves dealing with ambiguity, preconceptions, vested interests, status quo methods, and often hubris as we set out to consider options in any management situation. In these circumstances, we usually mix quantitative data with what we know, and what we...
Losing is good practice for winning
Nobody wins all the time, in fact, most lose most of the time, so something distinguishes the winners from those who just give up, I reckon it is two simple things: Winners learn from losing, what not to do, what to do better, how to prepare, what the competition...
The real reason.
In a generation, electronic communication has grown from initial inception to ubiquitous, the fastest adoption of any technology and supporting behavior change ever. I have heard all sorts of babble about why this is, but it seems to me that there is one simple...
Dependencies.
We spend lots of time dreaming up new stuff, but there are almost always things that we take as given, things that we do not question, usually because they are so basic, that we never think to do otherwise. Many years ago, a part of my responsibilities was for the...
PowerPoint fatigue.
PowerPoint, the Microsoft program has become such a part of the daily regime of sharing information sharing that it has impacted on the way we communicate, and it has its detractors, of which I am one. Some time ago, I was at a conference where a senior bureaucrat was...
How do you choose?
This almost completed Federal election was about a lot of things, many of them contradictory, and beyond the wisdom of the bulk of the electorate to distinguish the rhetoric and spin from the facts. Does the sad view of the crumbling social and economic infrastructure...
Collaboration lessons from Canberra
This hung election has generated a tsunami of comment, but nothing I have seen on the mechanics of collaboration, a key factor in any lasting resolution to the impasse I would have thought. The idea of a "party" is simply an expression of the need for group action to...
Scale, speed and technology
The challenge of competing successfully in the digital age is to build the advantages of scale, without the inertia of the bureaucratic structures that usually come with it as a means to manage and control activities and investment priorities, not to mention the...
Mass amateurisation
15 years ago the task most organisations were applying themselves to was "mass customisation". How do we mix the cost benefits of mass production with the individual needs of the customer? Dell redefined the PC market by finding ways, as retailer Zara transformed...