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...
The second best word to close a sale.
The best word in sales is 'Free', it will close more often than any other, by a long stretch. However, being free also implies there is no value to the 'buyer' and in any event, it is not really a sale. Only when there is an exchange of some sort can it be...
The role of medicine in marketing
Customers buy to relieve some sort of pain, or fill a need. Sometimes that pain is real, the need genuine, and sometimes it just takes the form of a psychological itch that needs scratching. Whatever the form, source or type of the pain, nobody buys...
9 drivers of digital transformation
'Digitisation' like many other 'ation' words has become a cliché, thrown around with no specific meaning that is consistent and generally understood. It has many parts, 'Industry 4.0', IoT, AI, AR, and so on, but what do you have to do to 'Digitise'? It is way more...
The flip side of strategic planning
When should you let go of the sunk cost that is not performing? How do you decide when to quit, walk away from an investment? It is as important a decision as the one you made when planning where to allocate your resources in the first place. Strategic quitting is the...
Is leadership dead in the Clown Factory?
Dismay is the only (polite) word to describe the feeling as I watch the machinations and manipulation of current politics that passes for representative government. Where is the humility, empathy, dignity, and recognition that they are there to serve, which is a...
Business Improvement Handbook: Chapter 1. Cash.
Have you ever started to read a book, and decided to miss chapter 1? I guess few ever have. Miss chapter one, and you miss the foundation of what is to come. It is the first impression, creates the context in which the book is set, irrespective of it being fiction or...