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Leadership & Management

Thriving in a time of Complexity

Graham Birkenhead, March 19 2024

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, complexity seems to be a persistent constant. As business owners and CEOs, the challenge is not just to navigate this complexity but to thrive within it. We humans have been running businesses for a long time (several thousand years), so you'd think we would have a good handle on how to do that....

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Leadership & Management

What has Behavioural Economics ever done for us?

Graham Birkenhead, March 12 2024

As I talk to business owners, I often enquire as to what is high on their list of headache inducing issues - and the 2 that are most commonly mentioned are money and people. And it's been like that for many, many years. The specific details may change, but those 2 categories

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Leadership & Management

The Answers are Out There ...

Graham Birkenhead, February 27 2024

And while we can look at the legacy of human endeavour for many answers to today's questions, there is a much richer and older source of inspiration and ideas that could help us solve many of our more tactical and systemic challenges.    And that is the natural world around us.  Over millions or billions of years of evolution, living organisms...

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Market Strategy

The Three Most Important Things in Marketing

Andrew Penny, February 20 2024

Take the image above for example. It looks like a collection of hammers but, in fact, each hammer is different and has a unique purpose: hammers for masons, hammers for welders, hammers for carpenters, joiners, framers, prospectors, and so on. If you were in the ‘hammer’ business, I would challenge you to determine which of these segments you...

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Market Strategy

Cupid for Business

Andrew Penny, February 13 2024

Personalization and Matching.  Dating apps use algorithms to match potential partners based on interests, behaviours, likes and dislikes* (see the last newsletter for more of these dislikes).  B2B marketing can leverage market research to determine the same sorts of criteria and create the best possible match between buyer and seller....

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Leadership & Management

Dictum Meum Pactum

Andrew Penny, February 6 2024

The London Stock exchange, founded in 1571, has the motto “dictum meum pactum” on its coat of arms. It shows that members of the exchange are literally bound by what they say – without need of a written contract.  In more modern times we would say, ‘my word is as good as my

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Leadership & Management

Look Differently

Graham Birkenhead, January 30 2024

We've probably all seen starlings.  Brownish birds that hang around in groups, often with quite thuggish behaviour as they swarm a food source to the exclusion of all other birds.  If you look a  little closer, you might notice that when they catch the light, there seems to be some iridescence to their feathers - and if you stand back you...

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Market Strategy

Opportunity Research vs Market Research

Andrew Penny, January 23 2024

Depending on who you ask, Market Research can mean focus groups, data analysis, demographic studies, customer surveys and any number of things. But no matter how it’s defined, it typically looks at a group of potential buyers and tries determine if they could be convinced to buy your product or

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Leadership & Management

The Edge of Chaos

Graham Birkenhead, January 16 2024

You don't build a business – you build people – and then people build the business. Zig Ziglar I was recently running a workshop for a client to address the way they worked (their processes and organisational structures) and they way they worked together (communications and culture). During the energised conversation, I was reminded once again...

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Leadership & Management

Kick Start 2024: Wisdom from the St. James Computer Dating Society

Andrew Penny, January 9 2024

Way back in the swinging '60s, Jane Ball pioneered the first digital dating enterprise in London, England. Her secret sauce? Unconventionally successful. Instead of probing about desires, she asked what people decidedly ‘did not want’. It turns out that individuals had a foggy view of their wants, but a crystal-clear vision of what they did not...

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