There is no second chance to create a first impression. Over the Easter weekend my partner and I visited her family in Scotland. Driving up on the Thursday evening, we stayed at a hotel which is part of a chain close to Preston just off the M6. The room was clean, the staff very friendly…
I recently read an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled ‘Why Smart People Struggle with Strategy’ which made me think – as small business owners can we go wrong with strategy? The article suggests that smart people are more brittle in their thinking and lack the key characteristics of a good strategist – flexibility,…
In his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R Covey’s 5th habit is to Seek first to understand then to be understood. Essentially you should listen intently with the objective of understanding. I spent twenty five years in commercial radio in the UK. I was trained to conduct a thorough fact find,…
As the old adage goes, ‘To fail to plan is to plan to fail’- and you don’t want to become a government statistic! There are many people setting up in business today who are fantastic at what they do – in fact they are just the sort of person a business owner would want working…