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While the Bridge Keeper in the movie The Holy Grail only asked ‘questions three’, I will ask you ‘questions eight’. Eight questions that as a business owner you can ask yourself, and the answers to which could help you cross the bridge to greater success. We talk a lot about being ‘Best in World’ - executing on the above is the path to get...
Read MoreYou may be a business-man or some high-degree thief, They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief. But you’re going to have to serve somebody! Bob Dylan Dylan’s highly insightful words came to mind recently when I was discussing channel strategy with a client (give him a listen). They asked about who would be the best channel partner to...
Read MoreWhen I hear the expression “Best in World” I typically think of sports – F1, Olympics, Football and so on. The recent World Cup in which Lionel Messi scored two goals to lead Argentina to victory is a shining example of being “Best in World’! The road to victory is long. Argentina had to be one of the 32 qualifiers from amongst 3,900 FIFA...
Read MoreIt is difficult to understand how much the world of business has changed in the last 4 or 5 years. We have seen an earth-shaking amount of technological change, the adoption of which has been accelerated by fundamental changes in the way we work and communicate with each other. We now live in a world where distance is irrelevant, knowledge is...
Read MoreI am reminded of the truism that the average person has less than one leg. Looming recessions, stock markets down, bond values up, interest rates up, inflation up, market contractions, etc. It would seem that there will be lots of turmoil. These changes will impact you to some extent if you are highly leveraged. But when you think about the...
Read MoreAlmost 30 years ago Forrest Gump summed up working at Kingsford this way, “My mom always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.” And so here, in Jeopardy style, is a sampler of what we learned this year… 1. 2,000 - How many padded rooms are built each year in the United
Read MoreSometimes the best way forward is so obvious that we often overlook it. This is true with companies wanting to increase their revenues and to become more profitable (of course the two are not necessarily synonymous...) They look at new markets, new products, new partners, complicated sales promotions, advertising campaigns and so on. All of which c...
Read MoreTo my dismay it happened again. I drove to a car show in Vermont and won a prize… I joined over 500 cars at the British Invasion in Stowe, Vermont. It’s about 5 hours from Ottawa with lots of pretty and really twisty roads. I go to these shows because I like cars, especially British cars. My car is really only an excuse to hang out with a bunch o...
Read MoreOK, so you have determined that investing in a new market is the right way to move your company forward. And you have determined which is the best market segment to focus on. The next challenge is determining how you actually get into that market, in other words what is your market entry plan? Your market entry plan is going to be highly situationa...
Read MoreAnyone remember VUCA? It’s an acronym that stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. I’ve used VUCA as a strategic planning tool when trying to understand what was going on around me and so increase the chances of coming to an optimal course of action. As a concept, it was first described by the leadership guru Warren Bennis in...
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