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Monthly Archives: June 2010
Cash for suggestions – is it necessary?
Many businesses offer cash for suggestions, put a suggestion box near the canteen, and wonder why most of the suggestions are physically impossible, morally debatable, and often both. In the end, successful suggestion programs offer the reward of personal satisfaction … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Management, OE, Operations
Tagged Leadership, lean, Management, Operations
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To tax or not to tax!
Despite the optimistic nonsense coming out of the Government in Canberra, and the shrill response of the opposition and mining industry, we need to consider the proposed new mining tax in a wider context. I am not an economist, so … Continue reading
Posted in Change, Leadership, Personal Rant
Tagged Change, Leadership, Management, Personal Rant
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It would be nice to know
Now there is an explanation for the common situation where a person fails to see what to others appears to be blindingly obvious. The Dunning-Kruger effect provides the psychological evidence supporting what most of us see often, and that is … Continue reading
Posted in Management, Personal Rant, Strategy
Tagged Management, managing yourself, performance assessment, Personal Rant
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Cheap or Frugal
“Cheap” implies less of everything that is important, not built to last, minimal attention to the detail, and certainly little customer service. However, “Frugal” implies a discipline that ensures that waste is eliminated, unnecessary features eliminated, but the basic performance … Continue reading
Posted in Branding, Customers, Marketing, Small business
Tagged Branding, customer, Marketing, Sales
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Data and useful information.
Working with a relatively new client recently, I was very impressed with the data that was available, but bemused by the almost total absence of productive use that was made of it. It became obvious pretty quickly that most of … Continue reading
Changing the climate game.
The current debate, such as it is in Australia in relation to climate change, is all about the sort of tax regime that is required, and the need to change peoples behavior, and thus their attitudes. What all this misses … Continue reading
Features and benefits
How often we confuse the reasons our customers buy products, how easy it is to get carried away with the technology, the newness, the features of the product, and never consider the real, usually unstated drivers of consumption. Great marketing … Continue reading
Posted in Branding, Communication, Customers, Marketing
Tagged Branding, communication, customer, Marketing
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Challenge of the first.
In this digital age, the first contact in most situations is digital, where the marginal cost is approaching zero. This simple fact has changed the sales cycle, as this contact can evolve into an offer to become closer, or it … Continue reading
Posted in Management, Sales, Social Media
Tagged customer, Management, Sales, web stuff
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Origins of “free”
As the web makes the marginal cost of anything that can be delivered electronically too close to zero to measure, the world of marketing changes. Convincing the boss that the capacity of the rack of servers he has just shelled … Continue reading
Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Tagged Branding, communication, customer, Strategy, web stuff
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Copying is not enough.
It is pretty easy copying the machines, layouts, and the physical things that go towards producing something, and there are consultants by the thousand who will help if you need it. What you cannot duplicate easily are the management systems … Continue reading
Posted in Management, OE, Operations
Tagged Management, Operations, performance assessment
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Problem solving continuum.
The variety of approaches to problem solving appear to form a continuum, that looks a bit like: The “workaround” where you find a way around the problem, hoping by magic it will go away. Further along the continuum we have … Continue reading
Other consequences
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is one of disastrous proportions immediately, and into the long term as the environmental impacts become clearer. However, there are other consequences not talked about yet, that of the impact it will … Continue reading
Lessons from the buffet.
I had lunch a few months ago with a client, just at the local club, nothing fancy, as we discussed the very challenging problems of operational flow through his plant. It was a buffet, simple, serve yourself, and as luck … Continue reading
Less is often more
Most marketers equate success to more; more ads, more locations, more customers, more Sku’s, more appearances in the press, and so on. However, the quest for “more” leaves a lot on the table, as it disregards the value of what … Continue reading
Knowledge worker productivity.
How do you figure out the productivity of employees paid to think? In the old days, productivity was measured by a range of quantitative measures, quantity, cost, conformance to standard, cycle times, and so on. Now, when the productivity is … Continue reading
The power of a presentation
A while ago, I sat through two consecutive presentations on related topics, the first was energising, interesting, and memorable, the second was cold, dirty, dishwater. Thinking about the manner of the presentations, rather than the value of the words, led … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Marketing, Personal Rant
Tagged communication, Marketing, Personal Rant
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Book piracy?
Will the iPad and Kindle do to books what has happened to music? You have to believe they will. At the moment, it is the early adopters who are looking for books electronically, but it should not take too long … Continue reading
Posted in Innovation, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Tagged Change, customer, Innovation, Marketing, web stuff
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Web freedom and freedom of speech
As we grapple in this country with the notion of Canberra putting filters on the net, as has happened in China, and the various businesses and groups having their say, perhaps the most useful being Google, who have had the … Continue reading
Make meetings work
So many meetings fail to deliver an outcome simply because they do not ask for one. Here’s an tactic I saw at work a while ago in a meeting chaired by someone I know well with an extensive record of … Continue reading
Management and conformity.
Management involves a huge amount of compromise, and hubris amongst all the more usual stuff you see about strategy, vision, performance measures and the like. We are all human, and often seek the easy way out, the low risk option. … Continue reading
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