4 steps to effective cross functional performance improvement
When you want superior performance, implement a number of key cross functional metrics. Gaining agreement on a set of metrics that genuinely track a projects cross functional performance is not a simple task. KPI’s are usually focussed on functional...
Knowing is not the same as understanding.
Warren Buffets side-kick Charlie Munger repeats a story in his 2007 USC Law School commencement address which he tells often. The key part is from minute 28, that I think absolutely applies to the practice of marketing. "I frequently tell the apocryphal story...
Who will be left to do the cleaning?
Gas, it seems is the way forward, according to the Prime Minister. It seems to me that the conflicted debate about the evolution of our energy sources between fossil fuels and renewables, who wins and who loses, is more about the deployment of capital, and the...
Finding your state of creative flow
A short while ago I felt very sad, and uplifted at the same time. Weird. I was watching my 4 year old granddaughter play , keeping herself company in her own fantasy world, jumping from one thing to another without any hesitation, no sense of self consciousness, but...
A essential tool to anticipate problems
‘5 why’ is a tool often used to understand the real cause of a problem. Finding those real causes is often like peeling an onion: one apparent problem or more often symptom of a problem, leads to another, to another, until the root cause is clear. Often...
For freelancers: How to think about the price.
Regularly, I find myself in a discussion with those who sell their time and expertise rather than a physical product, talking about price. How do you set it? After 25 years of doing it for myself, you might think I have some tips? Well, I have plenty of...
The inconvenient truth about marketing
As a marketer, I want data to better understand the risks and impact of investments in marketing. I am a true believer in data, which also means that the limitations of data are factored into my thinking. The nonsense pushed around for decades that by default,...
Does the Corona bug rate as ‘Darwinian’ commercial catalyst?
Robust ecosystems have points of balance; change is incremental, competitive, and evolutionary, leading to a revised point of balance. When a species becomes dominant, that dominance becomes the source of weakness over time, as evolution requires responses to...
The essential template for hindsight planning
How do you execute on that BEHAG? How do you fulfil the vision? How do you accomplish the mission? These are all questions I get from time to time from people stumped at the point where the dream, whatever label you choose to put on it, has to be turned into...
10 Traps to avoid when selling your business
We are in uncertain times, and under those circumstances, perhaps counter intuitively, there are many opportunities for all forms of M&A activity. For many owners of SME's, this Covid crisis is the last straw. You have worked hard for years to build a...