This isn’t new, but it’s fun. The Telegraph’s ‘Venture Navigator’ allows you to test your entrepreneurial skills across different areas. Go play.
Managers are like drunken cyclists, says Freek Vermeulen at Random Rantings — that is, they look for easily visible solutions rather than peering into the murk where the problem probably resides. When a company’s in trouble, it’s more likely the solution will lie in the ‘soft’ issues of reputation, morale, and culture than in cost-cutting or drastic headcount reduction.
The intangibles are less easy for competitors to ape, for one thing. If you look after them, “they can make all the difference, because they can’t be bought and take much time and effort to develop.
Lord Turner’s got his work cut out for him as it’s revealed that FSA, of which he’s become chairman, payed Clive Briault a performance-related bonus of £30,000, plus £582,952 of compensation and £300,000 salary — making him the highest paid board member of the year. The total board tally came to £3.2m, up from £2.6m in 2007 — and this was in the face of a net loss. And Northern Rock.
Said one anonymous observer: “In the current climate it does not seem advisable for people to be taking heafty bonuses and the issue of who is to blame for Northern Rock makes it even more surprising that they are receiving performance-related pay.”
Jeff Randall likens Sly Bailey at Trinity Mirror Group to Charles Allen at ITV (and that’s not good).
Bill Gates’s tips for success in the Speccie.
Inarticulacy: the PM’s undoing? Mick Fealty thinks so. Brown’s sleep-inducing speeches and inability to say anything memorable is a problem shared by fellow Scot Andy Murray. We don’t like him as much as we should apparently. Is it because he’s too good? (Murray, that is.) Chicken Yoghurt imagines Brown behind the till at a supermarket — and he doesn’t come off very well. The business message? Leaders: it’s no good being clever if you cannot communicate. Go on a course if you have to. It’s essential to keeping people on side.
We’re not sleeping enough, says Travelodge — 75 per cent of us aren’t getting the recommended eight hours a night. Economic woes are taking the worst toll on bankers, accountants and estate agents — lorry and taxi drivers also suffer as an occupational hazard.
Jude Fiorillo asks whether we can all take a leaf from Google when it comes to forum-style marketing techniques. “This is a great example of the transformation that’s taking place in the world of marketing, where traditional ‘push’ based marketing is fading out, and companies learn to engage people in what we call ‘experience’ based marketing, and which fosters community growth.”
Does it translate for other businesses? Hope so, because it’s got to be an excellent budget option for slimmed down marketing teams.
The credit crunch has made it into the dictionary. Great. Now we have a name for it. Could we have forecasted it? Stumbling & Mumbling says not.
But its dictionary debut comes just in time for Sir Stuart Rose to issue a profits warning and sack M&S foods boss and his expected successor Steve Esom.
It was John Lewis’s turn later in the week — the popular store announced the worst week in over a year.
At least it can count on custom from one set of loyal customers…. After urging restraint on the pay front, Alistair Darling et al got an (admittedly stingy) 2.25 per cent pay rise… but they still get their perks at John Lewis, where they can kit out their second homes at the taxpayers’ expense.
A nice antidote to all the bad news: Guy Kawasaki features some groundbreaking innovations that pack a social enterprise-punch, too.
Adding one more to Kawasaki’s list, Glasgow-based Red Button Design is prototyping a water purifier for the developing world. In poor communities, you’re often 6km from the nearest clean water source, says co-founder Amanda Jones. Red Button’s solution is a lawnmower-shaped container that uses ‘reverse osmosis’ to sanitise water as it’s rolled.
I wonder what else it can clean up.
