For having more productive discussions ... I was an observer at a workshop and conference recently. As happens at these events, people were split into various groups to consider specific subjects. Lots of interesting discussion was generated and many good ideas came out of it. By the looks on their faces, the participants felt like they had made go...
Read MoreFor this instalment of the accelerator we are going video. Let us know what you think. Bottom Line: If you find ways to help your clients reduce their labour needs, you can charge more, differentiate yourselves and create deeper customer relationships.
Read MoreAcceleration is all about going faster, and then going even faster, and then faster still. If you look at a graph of acceleration – it shows that over time, your speed, or size, or revenue doesn't just get larger in a nice straight line, but it’s a line that curves upwards. Now the thing is with acceleration, as opposed to a nice steady linear g...
Read MoreI hate waiting for people when I ski. Well maybe hate is a strong word, but waiting does break my flow. My friend Andrew (yeah same name as me) is a fabulous skier - a Level 3 Certified Ski Instructor no less. And for those of you who don’t know about skiing, that’s pretty close to godliness. (Level 4s are the real gods – at least they think so...)...
Read MoreOn my journey home over the weekend on a busy highway, I was able to watch the driving style of another driver. We joined the highway together – I noticed him because he was in the wrong lane and squeezed into the on ramp behind me. We slipped into the traffic stream and went on our way. A minute later, his car went flying past me on the right...
Read MoreI ask all our clients for a report on sales by customer for the last 2 or sometimes 3 years; but even a single year (as the example below shows) provides great insights. And, with multiple years you also get trends. Next, I do something that is incredibly simple but provides huge insights. I load the data into a spread-sheet, sort by revenue (lar...
Read MoreIf you are in business, you have stakeholders. They are all the people that have an interest in what you are doing or could be affected by what you are doing. At a recent Stakeholder Management workshop that I was running we were wrapping up and it was question time. There is always some bright spark that asks the question that attempts to cram a...
Read MoreLegacy Constraints are the Achilles' Heel of enterprise companies; they are your opportunity. One of our clients is a rapidly growing software as a service (SAAS) company. We are helping them on their way to becoming a global company - which of course takes money. Our initial evaluation showed there were a number of billion-dollar companies that ap...
Read MoreI was chatting with a friend the other day, explaining a little more about what I do when he stopped me and said: “I keep hearing that term - what exactly do you mean by end-to-end and why do you talk about it all the time?” Once you are exposed to end to end (e2e) it comes naturally but it can take a while to grasp the subtleties. e2e is core to...
Read MoreDuring a kick off meeting with a new client we were discussing how best to accelerate beyond his local trading area. We talked about geography, product lines and market segments. When I suggested he focus on a very specific offering for a unique demographic his comment was – “Geez – that market is way too small”. He was confusing small for narrow;...
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