Posted on January 06, 2020

A new year brings new goals for many in their life and business, but how many new year resolutions are truly SMART? SMART is a simple but incredibly effective acronym for any objective or new direction. So whatever aims you’ve set yourselves this January run SMART over them and make them more likely to be […]

Posted on December 17, 2019

While the election is over, the fallout is just beginning. At an organisational and individual level, social media echoes have slaughtered expectations and relationships. And I’m don’t mean the various advertising approaches and fake news used, but rather the flawed nature of the medium itself. All social media works by pulling together people with common […]

Posted on November 26, 2019

For many organisations there are a range of grants they could apply for to support their activities. Yet many fail to apply. This is partly due to a lack of awareness of the specific grants available that might suit their needs. But more usually it’s because they don’t have the simple process in place to […]

Posted on November 22, 2019

One of the most effective tools for time management is the simple to do list. Particularly when the list is made daily and the sequence allocated best matches the need and time available. But even with the best of intentions, this sometimes fails or becomes blocked by an item. The longer that the item isn’t […]

Posted on October 29, 2019

The old aphorism fail to plan, plan to fail is true in all walks of life. It is particularly true for business plans if you wish to survive and thrive long term. Plans provide structure and enable action towards common goals. By identifying key performance indicators, they permit measurement towards those aims and through understanding […]

Posted on October 22, 2019

We have all been in teams where we think that an agreement has been made to act in a certain way; but then someone thinks of a ‘clever’ way to wriggle out of it on a technicality. This usually happens at the key no-going-back point, which is then used as the justification because I had […]

Posted on June 25, 2019

The How Fast? How Good? project running in the Forest of Dean has got me thinking about how much of what I do in my business relates to perception. Marketing, innovation and coaching are all about perceptions. Business planning also has a healthy dose of perception about what the business actually is and what it […]

Posted on May 31, 2019

While in business most of us politely avoid Brexit discussions, it does throw up some interesting reflections on how we now approach difference. Business is a social activity based on organisations, which come in many different formats from the sole trader through to the mega-national. But what ties them all together is how they cope […]

Posted on April 29, 2019

For politicians the local elections on the second are a key May date. But for businesses in the Forest of Dean the most important date is May 8th for making connections that matter. This is when three key elements of running small and medium sized businesses come together for the morning at Vantage Point in […]

Posted on April 08, 2019

This time last year businesses were beginning to panic about GDPR compliance and the effect that 25th May might have on contact relationship management, if the deadline was missed. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been so concerned? Apart from Google’s 50M euro fine by the French in February, there have been no major cases or breaches […]