You would think that it might be reasonable to assume that good companies aspire to provide great customer service, wouldn’t you. Some companies establish customer service as their primary goal. The bigger the company, the more the focus on the customer, in my view. But how much do we, as customers, help them to achieve [...]
It looks like it is going to be a big year. This year I will be back at University Of Wollongong teaching in the Arts Faculty – the same subject as last semester, ARTS301. I had tremendous feedback last semester from students. The subject is really about helping those about to graduate to understand how [...]
Last weekend my wife and were guests with a friend who is a barrister, and on the way to becoming a judge, all being well. We were talking about the mobile devices that we each had. He does not have one. No iPhone, no iPad, no Blackberry – not even a good old fashioned mobile [...]
Last Thursday I went our for my morning walk with my wife, Robyn. She told me that we had a problem with our washing machine. She thought that the motor had given up the ghost. We have had it for some time so we decided not to bother with calling a repair man and to [...]
This is not really a story about marketing. However it is something that you might want to know and to think about if you like food. We eat quite a bit of fish in our household. I normally buy fish at a little hole in the wall fish shop in Kiama. The shop is tiny. [...]
A study was recently completed by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute into the smallest number of people that through exerting influence in a network, can bring about change. Apparently the number is slightly less than 10% – provided that the core base is highly committed and not prepared to change themselves. This has quite significant implications [...]
Digital technology empowers and it destroys. As the legacy silos entrench themselves and become more polar in their approach the silos start to crumble. It happens in business and more of that later. As is incredibly visible right now, it happens in politics. Sometimes those silos are not really about the leader or the policy [...]
We all exist in networks of people. Before the industrial revolution they were close knit and very local. Fast forward through the industrial revolution and the ability to travel far and fast and into the digital era and we all have complex and vast networks of connections. All of those connections have influence on our [...]
Everyone wants more sales. They want more revenue. And they want more margin. And they want it now. They think that this involves strategy. Actually what they are looking for is tactics, and when they adopt tactics without a strategy it will almost invariably fail. Tactics is selling canned tomatoes at retail in the supermarket. [...]
While the media is all doom and gloom, for some there is boundless optimism. I have been asked to do several pitches in the last two weeks, two to companies that are expanding into new areas and want to make sure that they capture all the market potential that they see, and one to a [...]