The real business of business If ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ were pots and pans, what would you cook up next? A schoolteachers’ old put-down for kids who speculated and questioned was a lesson even though ill applied. It taught us to look for the caveat, the qualification, in each proposition – if you like, the weak…
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Leaders have always had the role of model for those who work for them, at least for the good things they did. Now they have to consider what is needed in a world where subordinates are partners, where the rights of the worker have been increasingly protected, especially in the West, and where the accoutrements…
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If, like me, you fancy a piece of chocolate every now and then, pay heed. In spite of being part of a US$100bn market, your favourite indulgence is at risk because the man who grows the cocoa bean is quitting. So would you if you had to live on 50 US cents a day. That…
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Income drives expenditure. Other things do, too – credit, inflation (or the lack of it), war and a mood that things will get / are getting better. We educate people to be prudent, to save for
You could be heading a large multinational organization – or a small division of one. You could be a commercial entrepreneur, a social entrepreneur, or the head of a government department. In today’s competitive workplace: A business leader has to be creative. The last 15+ years have seen organizations of all sizes focus on creativity…
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It’s back to reality with a bump today. Not all is gloom and doom but if you want to look on the not-so-bright side for a moment consider the following facts. Some aspects of international trade are barometers of the world’s future economic health. Not perfect barometers but good enough to take notice. They stem…
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Photo credit: Armando Nguyen Today is National Day in Singapore. We have National Day every year. This year is special. It is fifty years since Singapore achieved independence and the celebrations are planned to commemorate the event with all possible enthusiasm and gratitude. Our fireworks will not go off without a suitable glance backwards at…
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Setting aside time to think is useless unless you know how to think. As our Solutions Society takes over more and more of our decisions it may be timely to remind potential and aspiring thinkers about how it is done. If this seems a bit like reinventing the wheel let me say that many clients…
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Anyone who has had small children to deal with knows that they learn instinctively by asking questions. So much so that their questions can become quite tiresome. The good parent never tires of answering them because they are the foundation of the child’s intellectual and moral code. It’s not just the answers either but how…
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Clients who come to us for help invariably want to improve. They want to ‘do better’ at work, be more of a ‘success’ (in their own eyes and in the eyes of others), rack up the sort of achievements they see other people gazetting. It is wholly good to have these aspirations but they are…
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