The 4 essential characteristics of leadership
The characteristics of leadership we expect from the local non-profit, to the largest businesses in the country, to the Prime Minister, are pretty much the same. Trust. We need to trust those who lead. However, trust is never just given, it must be earned by the...
6 conditions for Strategic creativity
'The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they'd already solved. They're open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking." Jeff Bezos...
3 parameters of successful differentiation
Having a point of differentiation that is sustainable, and sufficiently valuable to customers that they are prepared to pay for it, is marketing's holy grail. Everybody seeks differentiation, the challenge is to do it effectively. It seems to me there are three...
A picture is not worth a thousand words.
The old cliché that a picture is worth 1,000 words is disproved again and again, by all the pretty websites and dumb marketing collateral material out there, that is useless. While pictures have a valuable role in grabbing attention, the real commercial value is...
What would the goose want?
As I look at the current state of the economy from my spot as a boomer who has largely lived my life in times of peace and easy excess, it is becoming clear to me that there are two tracks at work. The first is the one along which is driving those who work for...
What multiple of LCM do you need to grow?
LCM: Lifetime Customer Margin. There is lots of talk, mostly hype, about Lifetime Customer Value. When you look closely, it almost always means lifetime customer revenue. Revenue is of little commercial value in the absence of margin, so the discussion is...
How do you measure process flow?
I was asked a challenging question from the back of a seminar room a while ago, before the lockdown, at the end of a conversation about the importance of flow. The questioner asked, and I quote: 'I get the theoretical stuff, but how do I go about measuring flow in...
The 6 evils of Cost Plus pricing.
Cost plus pricing has always been the worst pricing strategy to employ, although the most common. It is because it is superficially easy, understandable, and requires little thought. In my experience, the use of a cost-plus pricing model is an indication of a...
The 4 categories of customer pain points
Our sales efforts are often focussed on what we perceive to be customer pain points. Solve a problem for them, remove the pain, and you have a sale. So, the logic goes, and as far as it goes, it is pretty good. However, an analytical look at the pain points of...
What is the planners first responsibility?
Every plan I have ever seen, business plan, strategic plan, house plan, office layout plan, is made up of a set of assumptions about the future. To varying degrees these assumptions are based on two sorts of 'facts'. These so called ‘facts’ are not accurate...