Should Marketing expenditure be capitalised?
Effective managers are sensitive to the differences between working capital and investment capital. The former is the money it takes to keep the business running, to generate the transactions, fill the gap between the sales registered in the P&L, and the cash...
The ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ of price.
In competitive markets, price is a bit like a game, typified by the 'prisoners dilemma' of game theory, where two players acting in their own self-interest will result in a suboptimal outcome for both. In the classic scenario, you have two people, suspects of a...
The ‘one-percenters’ to supercharge profits.
One percent is a tiny fraction. A question I have asked many times of clients, and management in my former corporate life is 'who could not……… by one percent? The blank is filled in by a variety of items: Raise prices, reduce trading costs, reduce overheads,...
Do women or men have more/better ideas?
Machines do not, at least do not yet, have ideas. Ideas come from people, they are social things, emerging from social situations. We often find technical solutions to problems, but are they ideas? It seems to me that they are more the progressive peeling of the...
The four parameters of your ‘Current Situation’ audit.
The starting point of any review process is to define the current situation. In every case, the trends are as important, and often more important than the immediate position, as they are often leading indicators of what might happen into the future that will...
How to manage price for optimum profit.
We are all wary, in fact, usually very reluctant to put prices up, in case we lose customers. We ignore the sage advice of Warren Buffett who knows something about making a bob when he said: 'If you have to go to a prayer meeting before raising your prices, you...
Set objectives by deciding what not to do.
We usually look at objectives and goals as the things we want to achieve. We then set about figuring out the path towards achievement. There are always hundreds of ways to achieve a goal. Often we find ourselves bewildered by the options, and procrastinating or...
What do Einstein’s theories have to do with your job?
Most manufacturers seek to cut costs, a reasonable response to the increasingly tight margins available in all but very few manufacturing enterprises. There is an alternative, hard to see and act on, but viable. It involves thinking about the paradox that exists in...
Is your website the digital equivalent of a camel?
As we all know, a camel is a horse designed by a committee. So it is with many websites. Digital camels. Every page on a website should have only two objectives: Provide the catalyst to 'convert' to the next step. Make the conversion easy. Not every page is a...
The three inevitable stages of successful entrepreneurial activity
Every business starts small. The biggest on the planet all started somewhere, in a garage, dorm room, lab, somewhere between the ears of the entrepreneur. Most fail, or at best deliver a return that would have been dwarfed by the interest on the same investment in a...