Category Archives: Blog

All the latest information from the world of business consulting

Supporting Prioritisation Across The Business

Bit of food for thought today.

We have been working with a client recently on a simple, clear way of prioritising both strategic and day-to-day demands on time (in this case for the IT department).

If It’s Too Hard, Abdicate It…?

At Critical Action, we’re great believers in the principle that managers and leaders can’t create two independent sets of priorities for strategic (“we must improve the business”) and tactical (“we must keep our users and customers happy”) activities, and abdicate to operational staff the balancing of the two in the real world. Continue reading →

Planning Improvements – for startups?

In my last blog post, I outlined three key stages we use to help businesses improve, and I covered the first area (Commercial Imperative – the “why do it?”):

This time around, we’ll look at “Planning Improvements” – how to change the way your people do what they do, and how to give them better tools. These are the old classics of “people, process and technology”.

Commercial Imperative – what’s the case for doing it – the “why”
Planning Improvements – the what, where, how of action/change
Taking Action – the who and when to make change happen

Hold on. You’ve only just started – how can you improve!?

Well, we believe you can, and should, make improvements every day. Continue reading →

Since 2012 is “the year of the startup”…

newbusinessopens I’ve read a good number of headlines and articles lately that proclaim 2012 to be the year of the start-up. I suppose there are optimistic and cynical ways of viewing why that might be, but I thought I’d use this as the inspiration for putting my thoughts down in some blog posts aimed at the newer business.

Decide, Design, Deliver

We do a wide range of work, sometimes with long-established businesses, sometimes with start-ups. Continue reading →

Lower price? OK, use it more…

It’s been a really busy few months, and what we’ve loved is that much of the work has been really creative.

Our bread and butter is helping businesses dig into how they do what they do, and looking for how we, they and their staff can make incremental improvements. Very satisfying.

The work we really love though, is to look at the situation and help an organisation come up with fabulous new stuff – great, unexpected, (positively) disruptive ways of doing things.

We came up with a really intriguing business model for Qton Solutions (a favourite client of ours because of the idea-storms we generate together!) to consider. Continue reading →

Learning online – 85,000 at a time…

Keeping the Mind Fresh

I’ve always tried to do at least one course or qualification each year which is nothing to do with “the day job”. This is partly for relaxation, but also because doing radically different things forces you to think differently Lastly, it reminds me what it is like to have to start from scratch again, acquiring knowledge and skills. It keeps the brain fresh.

For example, I went to night school and studied British Sign Language for 4 years (after starting out with just a one year introduction course!). I followed that with a course on welding – slightly different. After that, I started Pilates classes (I’ve broken too many bones to go back to rugby again). Continue reading →

This month’s reading…

I’m re-reading a couple of my business books this month, both of which I felt it was worth mentioning. Both are thought-provoking, and full of practical things to try, even if you don’t agree with everything in them.

First up is “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis. Not just an interesting manifesto/thought piece, but also interesting to look at 2009’s predictions through 2011’s lens!

Second is “Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion” by Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini, which never fails to give me ideas for new things to try and new ways to look at old problems.

If you’ve not read them, give them a try – I’d love to know what you think of them.

Technologies Supporting Business Continuity

Office365 and Windows Server 2008R2 Business Continuity is a broad church, meaning different things to different businesses. It’s also very much a people thing; after all, it exists to keep people in jobs, delivering to customers, whatever happens.

That said, we have recently been involved in designing and deploying a fair few technology implementation projects within our process and systems work.

What is clear is that over the past year, and probably in the forthcoming year, there are a number of technologies which have come of age, or are due to have some significant upgrades that should transform them. Continue reading →

Chortling With The Chimp

MailChimp Logo This brief blog post is a hat-tip to MailChimp, the service we’ve started using for the Monthly-ish Updates recently.

I smile almost every time I use the service – instead of “email sent”, “details updated” or “new subscriber”, you get funny little lines like:

Fine piece of work!
You totally deserve a raise!
The MailChimp Crew Continue reading →

Talentropy?

We’ve been playing with words, images, emotions, icons and so on for some branding work we’re doing on a new offering. Something that fell out of this was a word that I just liked the sound of:

Talentropy

Then I thought a bit more about it – the flow of talent. This seemed like quite a useful concept to me.

As business owners, managers and leaders, there are two crucial concerns – creating value for stakeholders (owners, shareholder, staff, investors, communities, etc.) and finding and keeping good people for our teams. Value and Talent. Continue reading →

Unbreakable Business

Keith Shering, MD of Critical Action, was one of the speakers at the recent, very well received “Creating An Unbreakable Business” event, held at NetSupport in Market Deeping, and organised by The Business Club, Peterborough.

As well as coordinating the speakers, Keith was one of eight subject matter experts giving business owners and decision makers quick-fire, thought-provoking 15-minute talks on what can break businesses, and what we can do to make strong, resilient businesses that survive and prosper – making businesses more unbreakable. Continue reading →