How do you reward someone for a job well done? How do you explain that one person’s reward is smaller than another’s reward? Never has a management tool been used so blindly!
Continue readingCategory Archives: profitability
National Minimum Wage Hikes
The National Living Wage is due to increase by 6.6% from April 2022. The media always claims the impact of the April rise in the minimum wage “ramps up” costs. Although it’s not so easy to fill a job paying the minimum these post-pandemic days. Even then we would be behind our erstwhile friends in Europe. What effect does this 2022 6.6% increase in minimum wage have on your business?
Continue readingTraditional Benchmarking
This was very much the fashion in the 80s. It’s still a useful technique with a 21st Century twist. Enjoy the video.
Continue readingA New Book – Not Called ‘Getting Stuff Done’
My first book ‘The Manager’s Guide to Conducting Interviews’ is seven years old now! It seemed like a good idea to write the next one. Sufficient time has passed to erase the memory of the excruciation pain of creating a new book. The blank page, the flashing cursor, the ticking clock and the rumble of approaching deadlines. But as Douglas Adams said “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by” – with apologies to my future Editor!
Continue readingMoney
Go back in history far enough and you reach a time when groups, tribes were self-sufficient: hunter-gatherers eating meat and berries. As civilisation advanced, goods started to be traded between groups on a barter basis. Most of the goods were still consumed by the people that produced them. They had a desire to create good quality produce, both for their own consumption and for their trade. The growth of trade and commerce led to the invention of an advanced bartering system – money. Most people still consumed their own produce and traded the surplus. Mistress Goodchild was pleased to sell a few loaves in her village, particularly as everyone knew her loaves were the best.
Continue readingSimply Not Good Enough
In the world of business and, increasingly, in public organizations, 99% as good as the best is simply not good enough. The winner is remembered and gets 80% of the business while the runners up share the rest. World class performance is about having that small advantage and using it well time after time. Not that I’m suggesting one small advantage will keep you in front for very long. Your advantage needs to be one that continually renews, expands and refreshes. No time to rest on your laurels here.
Continue readingA Higher ROI
The Board, and the Chief Executive in particular, are aware that the shareholders would prefer a higher return on their investment, everything else being equal. The route to enhanced returns in the long term is through raising the operating profit from a given turnover. I’ve published much about ways to reduce input costs, overheads, and of the ideas behind making people more willing to work toward your goals. Improving people’s performance, in the long term, is a difficult management challenge. It is very easy to establish and incentivise SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound) goals and make people work toward them. Do you think you can create an incentive scheme that will cover all eventualities?
Continue readingThe Growing Organization
I wrote this article a long time ago. It’s about the management changes needed when growing an organization. As I thought about it, I realised there wasn’t one article but several – one for each stage of development. In 1972 Larry Greiner placed an article with this title in the Harvard Business Review. He wrote about the different management requirements as the organization grew. In fact, he went further and said the different skills needed at each stage, carried the seeds of their own destruction. As the organization succeeded and grew, the skills that made that possible poisoned the body corporate. Greiner illustrated it excellently in a diagram like this. Each phase has its own needs to create growth, but that management style eventually strangles growth.
Continue readingThere is no standing still
In the world of business and increasingly in public organizations, 99% as good as the best is simply not good enough. Only the best is remembered and gets 80-90% of the business. All the rest scrabble for the 10%. World class performance is about having that small advantage and using it well, time after time. Not that I’m suggesting one small advantage will keep you in front for very long. Your advantage needs to be one that continually renews, expands and refreshes. No time to rest on your laurels, there is no standing still.
Continue readingA Consultant’s Dream
“Employee engagement” is a management consultant’s dream! It brings so many advantages, produces such amazing bottom line results, why hasn’t everyone bought into it? Why do very savvy senior businesspeople think a 10% improvement is what to expect? Scepticism. A perfectly healthy buyer scepticism. The lure of gold created a rising tide of Consultants eager to service the need. You just needed to read a book or two after all.
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