This Is Not My Responsibility
“This is not my responsibility” is unfortunately a sentence which is heard more than it ever should be in businesses. One of the common factors I find when working with underperforming teams or organisations is a lack of clarity around roles and responsibilities. As a…
Sales & Marketing
Watch your revenue soar What keeps your customers coming back? Do you know your unique market position? Are you happy with your sales results or does your sales and marketing approach need a make over? Our sales and marketing programs enable clients to realise their…
A New (and Better?) Philosophy
Business consultants spend a lot of time talking to clients about staff issues – and all too often it’s because someone on the team hasn’t acted in a way that the boss would have done “back in my day”. It’s a tough one – often…
A Business Owner with too many hats
They call this a “Dashing Cavalier” hat: When you are at work as an SME Business owner, do you try and wear one of these? The Dashing Cavalier: The person who can do everything? What I am talking about here is that as a business…
Improving Productivity 3 – the Fifty-Minute Block Principle
How much of your day is taken up by responding? Don’t get me wrong clearing your inbox, responding to colleague questions, or texting friends about a catch-up is important, so is getting on with the work that your team and clients depend on you to…
Improving Productivity 2 – the Five-Sentence Principle
How easy is it to sit at your computer, banging out reports, drafting emails or surfing the internet, but come 6 o’clock you wonder what you’ve actually achieved? If you feel like you never have enough time in your workday, there are a few changes…
Improving Productivity – the Five-Minute Principle
How often have you wanted a few more hours in the day? I know I have and without a doubt it is the most common request from business owners. Owning a business is exhilarating but it can also be exhausting, especially if you’re having to…
How Much Value Do You Put In Your Current Customers
So much time and money is put into the acquisition of new customers but I commonly find that a lot of businesses do not put the same amount of effort into their current customers. This can often lead to customer churn and a constant battle…
How does your business rate on People Management?
Business objectives and people alignment help your organisation achieve its strategic plan. Without this important link between the business plan and your organisation, it may be difficult to achieve your Vision. Whether you are managing performance reviews or undertaking strategic alignment, our performance management systems…
Are you are a High Performer? Try this test…
There are two ways to excel in business: The first is by developing effective strategies. The second is making those strategies happen, in a highly effective manner. The latter is all about personal high performance, yet very few executives and entrepreneurs spend much time improving…
Why isn’t my Business Reaching its Potential?
6 COMMON Areas of untapped potential Are you “Niche Marketing” your products or services for maximum lead generation and profit or do you generally do the same as your competition? Effective marketing is changing at an alarming rate and if you present yourself as a…
Radical Transparency Will Change Your Life
It’s possible that I spend too much time thinking about how to improve business so it benefits everyone. But sometimes it leads to some pretty funny observations. Take, for example, one of our Best Practices, which we call “Radical Transparency.” Transparency is supposed to solve…
Learning Styles
Have you ever had a team meeting, shared your wishes on what needs to happen, only to find that only a few of the troops do what you ask? I often hear things like “I don’t know how many times I have to say something…
Business regrets
What is your biggest regret in business? When I look back, my biggest regret in business was that I did not engage business advice when I bought my first business. Coming out of a high level corporate role and purchasing a small business was going…
The Power of Conducting a Swot Analysis
Don’t under estimate the power of conducting a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis. When we are working with clients this is usually completed quite early on in the process to get an overview of a company’s potential and is a key component when…
Disorganisation
One of the things that we often encounter in businesses we visit is DISORGANISATION – sometimes it’s the boss, sometimes it’s the team members individually, sometimes (but fortunately, not very often) it’s everyone. Other times it’s the office or workshop environment that creates the opportunity…
What is your Hourly Rate?
The question of hourly rates is very relevant now. With costs increasing almost everywhere, business margins are being squeezed at a relentless rate. If you are in a service-based industry where your revenue includes a charge for time, then this may be of some interest…
The Importance of Budgeting Every Year
The majority of business owners we work with do not like budgeting. Whether it is because of a lack of excel skills, understanding the construction of how Profit and Loss or Cashflow statement are compiled or the fact it can be boring budgeting on your…
What’s in a margin?
Lately, most of us will have been dealing with rising costs in our businesses. In particular, the rising cost of materials. This is not a new phenomenon, but the frequency of rises on materials has hit new highs and is not showing any signs of…
Business Ownership: The dreams we once had
One of the first questions we ask of our new business clients is, “when you started this business, what was your dream?” You would not believe the wonderful and exciting answers we get! The sad thing is that many we talk to have “lost their…
A Business Owner: Fixing those issues
One of the first questions we ask of our new business clients is, “if there was one thing we could fix for you right now, what would it be?” You would be astounded the answers that we get! We all need to remember that when…
The Business Advisor / Consultant Paradigm
What do The All Blacks, An Olympic Gold Medalist and Bill Gates have in common? They all employ a coach. They employ a coach to help them “Create the perfect game plan perfectly implemented.” It is no coincidence that the vast majority of businesses that…
Are you seeing what you need to see in your business?
Most people have heard the terms “Can’t see the woods for the trees” or “becoming store blind”, but do you actually know what they mean? It is a common issue with a lot of SME business owners, generally because they are too busy on fire…
Sew, Mow or Row
In your business, are you the: Sewer? (The clothing type – not wastewater!!) Mower? Rower? The Sewer They are the fixers. They spend an extraordinary amount of their time (perhaps all of it) working on things in their business that are broken, or in need…
Keeping it fresh!
What a lovely weekend it was weather wise! It was so nice that it inspired my partner and me to walk Orakei Basin as we do once a month on average. As we approached the entry/exit point, I suggested that we take a new approach…