Pray harder for leadership.
As I look out my window in suburban Sydney, there is a bluish tinge to the air. The fires around Sydney, and along the Australian east coast have made us all aware that we do live in a very dry continent, and that we do not value the water resources we have, in...
The 3 complications of calculating an accurate ROI on your digital marketing investment.
Self styled 'experts', flog all sorts of metrics that are supposed to tell you how well your digital marketing efforts are doing. Many of them do give useful information, but it is only ever partial. I am certainly one who loudly advocates the extensive use of data...
Where to now for the bashed-up dairy industry?
There is an awful lot of hand-wringing going on amongst politicians, bureaucrats of various types, and industry pontificators about the state of the dairy industry. Sadly, it has been going on for as long as I have been an observer, which is a long time! The...
13 Ideas to use analytics to improve the credibility of marketing investments.
Marketing is all about making assumptions about the future, and how your investment in marketing activity will enable you to deliver revenue and commercial sustainability. Therefore, making informed assumptions then testing their validity as you implement,...
9 process management questions from the World Cup finals
The process drives the outcome, right? Well, mostly. So long as the process directs the actions to be taken, the order in which they are taken, and is able to withstand external pressure when it is brought to bear, then yes, it will drive an outcome. We can look at an...
What do bees know about marketing strategy?
Bees are essential to our survival, they are fascinating insects. There is much we can learn from their habits, the outcome of millions of years of evolution. They do not just fly around at random, pollinating as they go, they are highly organised, focused,...
6 ways leaders disrupt the ‘Lemming Effect’
It is a confusing world. On one hand, change is everywhere, and the pace of change is increasing as we watch. On the other, generating change in an organisation is really hard; we humans do not like change, despite what we sometimes say. We are hard wired to...
The two things we have to achieve for our grandchildren
Yesterday I listened to a hysterical condemnation of Woolworths, who had come clean to the Employment Ombudsman when they realised they had underpaid staff. Another example of big business rorting workers, or more evidence of the impact of overwhelming complexity of a...
A critical antidote to confirmation bias.
Confirmation bias is a seductive bitch. We see what we expect to see, the things that confirm our existing views and expectations, to the exclusion of alternatives. When taken to extremes, loonies like holocaust deniers, and the 'no vac' lot emerge and sprout their...
How to measure ‘Flow’ through a process.
The word 'Flow' has a few differing meanings, but all imply the smooth transition from one place to another. To improve operational efficiency, as well as the productivity of a process, the best way to go about it is to remove the sources of interruption to the smooth...