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All of business management: MBA in 1 article
This long-form article sets out what running any business is all about in terms of 8 key domains, and the connections between them. Thereby you’ll have insight in the core of all the business administration programs in the world. And in what you, as a manager, may get...
Need money for your business? 9 tips!
You want to invest (to start up, expand, replace, etc), but you don’t know yet where the money should come from. Make use of these nine sources. 1. Free up your own money. Take money from your bank, break open your piggy bank, sell your car or something else (you can...
Leadership: the three core skills (plus the most relevant test question)
So you want to be a leader. How to become one? First, you need to know what leadership skills you need. As for a first step, a classic model of Katz states that you must be competent in three areas: Technical: professional knowledge, thorough knowledge of products and...
4 Ways how Supply Chain thinking can improve your results
A supply chain is a sequence of companies that each deliver a contribution in a product's transformation stages from "nothing" to "delivered product". You can depict it like this: All of these companies operate independently, and all of them have a number of...
Financial fraud: how to cook the books?
Why do we hear so regularly that some firm has messed with their bookkeeping and financial statements? Simple: there are many good reasons for financial fraud! For instance: If your bonus depends on a certain profit level, you can feel tempted to "produce" that profit...
Relationship management: a practical how-to guide
Relationship management is about working on relationships that are [1] mutually beneficial, [2] durable, [3] pleasant. Yes, this requires investments, at the very least in terms of time. So if it isn't intuitive to you, you may wonder: why do it? It is...
Quinn: a leader’s complete attention radar (4 domains)
Leadership kind of people are the busy type. A million things to mind. Yet these can be quite easily clustered – Quinn offers a handy framework that revolves around two axes: [1] you have to attend to things inside and outside the organization, and [2] some things...
3 Quality angles: have you organized for yours?
In business, working on "quality" and working on "improvement" are more or less synonyms. Oddly enough, this is not always as essential as it seems. There are advantages to doing it, but these may not interest you enough. There are three basic stances towards quality,...
5S: Make (and keep) any work place LEAN
A work place, be it a garage, your computer, desk, or kitchen, can get quite messy. Within the extensive domain of Lean Production, there is a logical set of simple principles to keep it all in order: 5S. Originally, the S's in 5S are Japanese names. But luckily,...
De Bono: expand your thinking – 6 ways to look at things
Good chances that you've heard of De Bono and his Six Thinking Hats. Smaller chances that you recall what they were, and more relevant, what you can actually do with this color festival. Edward De Bono categorized six "typical" ways of thinking, and suggested that...
Go Viral! Use these 8 accelerators…
As everybody knows by now, trying to obtain individual and peer-to-peer engagement works infinitely better than traditional advertising in this age. The holy grail of such engagement is to "go viral", when your piece of content gets spread like crazy over the...
Scrum: the lean & mean development approach
SCRUM is a modern approach to project management. What is different then compared to a more conventional approach? Were there reasons to change? And how does Scrum work? Let's get to the three nut shells of the WHAT, WHY and HOW of Scrum! WHAT Like in conventional...
Freaks Cheats Familiars: assure you get attention
You are in business. Suppose that clients don't come flying in. So you're trying to be seen by the market. You are developing some marketing activities. The very first thing to do is immediately one of the tougher things: make the audience AWARE of your existence. You...
Value propositions: 3 classic ways (+ 1 bonus way)
Everybody in business tries to be attractive to the market. That means that people need to see a certain VALUE in your proposition. A famous model by Treacy & Wiersema highlights the three default "types" of value (value propositions) that you can offer the...
The 20-80 Rule rules everywhere … use it!
Everybody has heard of the 20-80 rule. Also known as the Pareto principle (which is a statistical cumulative distribution, but don’t let that bother you). What were the basics again, and what is interesting to know about it? Say you have 10 products (x-axis), yielding...
Eat That Frog: go through the mud for your ambitions!
Are you, full of plans, accomplishing less than you'd like to? Is the day over before you know it, feeling slightly disappointed about what you've managed to get done? And do you still hang around a lot on Facebook or Netflix? This has to do with each other....
Leadership: be able to vary the 4 styles
You have seen various leadership styles around you. The four prototypical styles are: 1. Directive, 2. Coaching, 3. Supportive, 4. Delegating. Many people will see themselves as "being" one of the four. They identify with one of the styles, as in "I am the coaching...
Complete business blueprint: no more blind spots
Business entails a lot to attend to. How does all of that relate? How to keep track of everything? My MBA framework for the training course SpeedMBA sets out a complete "business blueprint". For those who like a bit more words to a graph, I'll briefly explain the...
10 Things to want from clients (get more out of them)
Your clients have certain needs. Sure. Fine. Covered (right?) ... But what about you? What do you want from them? In fact, what CAN you want? Well, quite a lot. Let's have a look at a list of 10. Don't forget to read the last bit below the list. As you've seen, you...
Mindset: the ONE switch to improve everything
Carol Dweck wrote an interesting book about people having a “fixed” versus a “growth” mindset. "Fixed" hinges on the idea that things in life (people, capabilities, possibilities) are more or less fixed; "growth" on the idea that everything can be changed. The...
The eight elements of complete marketing
Strategic marketing is choosing to offer particular products for particular markets. Tactical marketing is the extremely broad field of making you and your offerings attractive to (possible) clients. How to summarize such a rich domain, in a way that gives you a kind...
Leadership… do you have it in you?
Leadership ... do you have it in you? Leadership. We tend to be intrigued by it, whatever the form of power behind it is. But what is a leader? It is not a formal position or role in an organization (like ‘product manager’). It can basically be anyone, who steps...
Bottom line improvement: more FUN in your work
Work is not always fun. There, I said it. For many people, up to more than half of all their time at work is not fun (or worse). In a whole career, that adds up to at least two decades of full-time not fun! Not a pretty sight, such neglect of such a potential to enjoy...
Covey: the 7 (okay 8) habits you must develop
Hey, who needs an intro? The following infographic about Covey's legendary work speaks for itself. Treat yourself to complete business understanding! . Enhance your business grip. See the bigger picture for ANY business. Get many ideas for improvement. Get 300 slides,...
Get Kaizen in a minute, challenge yourself the next month
KAIZEN is not some weird branch of Kung Fu, but the Japanese "philosophy" and practice of incremental improvement. Before explaining the conditions and the strengths of Kaizen, and before giving you a practical, fun and rewarding challenge, let's lay down the three...
Use competition to make you stronger: 4 ways
Know your enemy is a famous piece of Sun Tzu's advice in The Art of War. In business, competition is usually seen as the enemy. And especially in business there are four extremely good reasons to know your competitors in some depth. Why? Because working on these...
Driven: what we all do, in 4 words
Driven: what we all do, in 4 words Most of us know Maslov's pyramid of needs (physical needs, safety, affection, recognition, and fulfilment). Still a pretty strong model, but I found a more recent model of what drives us to be even more compelling (by Lawrence and...
Power: which of the 5 types?
Power: which of the 5 types? Do you have power? How so? And what power do you have to deal with? Power has always been a powerful theme in human interest: intriguing, disgusting, and appealing to the various many. French & Raven have pinpointed the grounds of...
Become Elon Musk: 5 (okay, 6) ingredients
Become Elon Musk: 5 ingredients Elon Musk – the man behind PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and more, is admired by millions. How can one person penetrate relatively closed industries such as banking, automotive, and spacecraft, and even make these industries look at him instead...
MBTI: pinpoint your personality in 4 questions
MBTI: pinpoint your personality in just 4 questions MBTI is the “Myers-Briggs Type Indicator“, a personality typology by (daughter) Myers and (her mother) Briggs, building forth on psychologist Jung. Many people judge that MBTI is so spot-on, that the personality...
Semco: democracy is in the house!
Semco: democracy is in the house! 15 September is the International Day of Democracy. Business guru Ricardo Semler has been serious about making his business fully democratic. With the absence of organization charts, function titles and formal rules (there is a...
Funding options: mix all 8 ways
Funding your thing ... mix 8 ways! So you're ready to blow anyone away with your start-up. Or to conquer the rest of the world with your expansion. There's just this small hurdle: you need the cash to do it. Many will now think of seducing investors, or convincing the...