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
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:
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
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
The Idea Trampoline. You know, where you can bounce your good ideas and your perplexing challenges back and forth, up and down, tumbling them around. Boing one way then another to see if the idea comes back looking any different, any better, still viable.
Sound interesting? Continue reading
Simple Tools...
One of our mantras is “keep it simple“, because we work in an area that is complicated enough to begin with!
When we look at how businesses can improve, it inevitably means having to maintain the big picture (where are we heading?) together with digging into the details (as they can often be the blockers). To drive simplicity through what we do, we evolved a very simple set of tools & reports, which we use to run projects.
Why simple, when we’re trying to analyse and solve complex problems? Continue reading
In a recent Twitter exchange with one of my friends (@eileenb), we were discussing productivity and planning. We covered things like the “5 Ps” (perfect planning prevents poor performance). As you might imagine, with a project manager’s hat on, things like the 5 Ps are stocks-in-trade for delivering the results clients need. My standpoint was slightly different though.
I suggested “3 new Ps” – Productivity, Priority and Purpose. Continue reading
Risk For The Rest Of Us – Managing Elephants in Rooms
Risk Management is a huge area with lots of specialist people, companies, books, qualifications and so on. So should we even go there if we’re not black belts…? And what’s this about elephants? Continue reading
What might Concorde crashing on take-off, and the Iraq War Inquiry tell us about making business decisions?
I often end up in situations where I am helping businesses make tricky decisions, some of which may have been put off for some time. They usually involve big, important things that affect people, profit, livelihoods, even lives. Continue reading
The new intro "in action"
We have recently created a “quick intro” to Critical Action Limited, as a PDF for you and your clients to download.
It explains a bit about what we stand for, and introduces our new campaign message – “On a mission to simplify consulting“. Continue reading
The latest round of Microsoft Labs “envisioning” videos have been getting quite a bit of press lately (sadly I didn’t get to this year’s Worldwide Partner Conference to catch the latest “live”).
Click here to see them (in a new window). Some are quite thought provoking, which is, I suppose, the intention. Continue reading