Cash for suggestions – is it necessary?
Many businesses offer cash for suggestions, put a suggestion box near the canteen, and wonder why most of the suggestions are physically impossible, morally debatable, and often both. In the end, successful suggestion programs offer the reward of personal...
To tax or not to tax!
Despite the optimistic nonsense coming out of the Government in Canberra, and the shrill response of the opposition and mining industry, we need to consider the proposed new mining tax in a wider context. I am not an economist, so perhaps am not trained to come up...
It would be nice to know
Now there is an explanation for the common situation where a person fails to see what to others appears to be blindingly obvious. The Dunning-Kruger effect provides the psychological evidence supporting what most of us see often, and that is that our (and others)...
Cheap or Frugal
"Cheap" implies less of everything that is important, not built to last, minimal attention to the detail, and certainly little customer service. However, "Frugal" implies a discipline that ensures that waste is eliminated, unnecessary features eliminated, but the...
Data and useful information.
Working with a relatively new client recently, I was very impressed with the data that was available, but bemused by the almost total absence of productive use that was made of it. It became obvious pretty quickly that most of it was produced by rote, and there was no...
Changing the climate game.
The current debate, such as it is in Australia in relation to climate change, is all about the sort of tax regime that is required, and the need to change peoples behavior, and thus their attitudes. What all this misses is the fundamental nature of the change that is...
Features and benefits
How often we confuse the reasons our customers buy products, how easy it is to get carried away with the technology, the newness, the features of the product, and never consider the real, usually unstated drivers of consumption. Great marketing is always about the...
Challenge of the first.
In this digital age, the first contact in most situations is digital, where the marginal cost is approaching zero. This simple fact has changed the sales cycle, as this contact can evolve into an offer to become closer, or it can become a barrier, but each party...
Origins of “free”
As the web makes the marginal cost of anything that can be delivered electronically too close to zero to measure, the world of marketing changes. Convincing the boss that the capacity of the rack of servers he has just shelled out for should be given away is often a...
Copying is not enough.
It is pretty easy copying the machines, layouts, and the physical things that go towards producing something, and there are consultants by the thousand who will help if you need it. What you cannot duplicate easily are the management systems that are deployed. You...