Being a self employed professional, a consultant, has its benefits and its downsides. The good thing is you’re responsible for your own success, the downside is that only you are responsible for your own success. This means you have to…
When running a business, a commercial team, direct or indirect sales, e-commerce, revenue marketing or whatever, doing daily mananegemnt is easier and more efficient than the big Quarterly Business Reviews. I’d rather have my team zoom in once a day…
hint: it’s all about leadership, empowerment and accountability In Lean manufacturing, there’s a lot of focus on standardisation. This is born out of the idea to control quality and to minimise waste in the process. Having well documented processes, proper…
Bad news happens fast, good news happens slow Morgan Housel on an interview with Diary of a CEO Morgan Housel, the author of a.o. the Psychology of Money, makes this quote in the context of how compounding on the long…
I keep on coming back to the topic of KPIs. I’ve written earlier about typical mistakes and how to prevent them, mostly in relation with commercial teams. What I’ve found is that it’s really important to differentiate between leading and…
Today was the day that after a typical European summer break of six weeks, my two youngest boys had to go to school again (our teenager had 7 weeks of vacation and only starts on Wednesday with actual classes –…
No matter what they say, sales or the act of selling is not an art. (for the record: neither is marketing). Succesfully selling a product, service or solution is either luck (you’d be amazed how often people get lucky) or…
Only last week did a customer for the first time talk about my logo, and he had it figured out. He recognised what it meant. In proper lean cultures, where KPI’s are set properly, you have a safe environment for…
Let me try a more provocative title this week. Many people have heard about lean, about manufacturing processes being optimised. When it comes to implementations beyond the shop floor in more transactional or commercial areas, people tend to have a…
For a large organisation to be effective, it must be simple. Jack Welch – former CEO of General Electric Doing something in a simple way is better than doing it in a complex way. Makes sense right? It’s too obvious.…