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Raise Productivity – Build on Your Strengths, Not Your Weaknesses
Raise Productivity - Build on Your Strengths, Not Your Weaknesses by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions Too often in business we focus on our business’ and staff’s weaknesses. The reasoning is that by addressing our weaknesses we can improve. This is a fallacy. The only way that you can improve and raise performance on a sustainable basis is by building on your strengths. Let’s look at it diagrammatically. Building on Weaknesses In this first chart we are looking
Four Team Building Activities Your Employees Will Love
As a manager, it’s extremely important that you teach your employees how to work together as a team. When your employees work together, it can improve company morale and productivity, which are extremely beneficial to the success of your business. There are plenty of team building activities out there that are designed to help your team learn how to work together. Unfortunately, most of these activities are boring and not very enjoyable, and many employees simply go through the motions
The 4 Building Blocks for High-Growth
The 4 Building Blocks for High-Growth by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions High-growth can be risky, but you can mitigate the risk by having focus, discipline and consistency in approach. Yet even then, businesses can fail – even those who prior to embarking on a strategy of rapid-growth were operating successfully. So what can we do to reduce the likelihood of failure? Understand Your Business Model – first of all, let’s be clear about what a business model is
How to Keep Top Young Managers
How to Keep Top Young Managers by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions Keeping top young managers - your future talent pipeline - is hard. Find out what they are looking for so you can retain them for longer. You have spent a lot of time, effort, resources and money in getting the best young managers – but are you managing to retain them?Recent research shows that often they are thinking about the next step, even if they seem fully
Don’t Manage for Profit – Manage for Value!
Don’t Manage for Profit – Manage for Value! by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions Managing for profit can be detrimental to your business in the longer-term. Discover the 4 guidelines to help your business thrive, not just survive. We are in uncomfortable times. Europe is facing a myriad of difficulties, China’s growth is looking to slow-down (albeit continuing), competition is more intense and customers are more demanding and better-informed. Yet amongst these difficulties there are companies who are not
Making Better Decisions – Using the Decision Matrix
Making Better Decisions – Using the Decision Matrix by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions Decisions are made in a subjective and varied way, creating poor decisions and contributing to poor outcomes. See how a simple tool can help you make better decisions - whether at business or home. When making business decision we often find that we are reinventing the decision-process every time, and consistently allowing subjectivity to sway our decisions. This is especially true in team or group
The 12 Ways to Engage & Retain Staff – Part 5
The 12 Ways to Engage & Retain Staff – Part 5 by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions 12 Ways to Engage & Retain Staff, Image (c) People Insight In the first blog in this series we looked at why employee engagement is so important and provided an overview of Gallup’s findings from its extensive research. This was summarised in the following 12 ways to engage employees. In the second blog we examined the first 3 elements in further detail.
Business Lessons from Fishing
Business Lessons from Fishing by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions What do good anglers know which we can use in driving stronger business growth and results? Fishing is one of the most popular leisure time pursuits in the world. There is something about going out there, rod in hand, to capture that ever elusive fish. This takes time, patience, skill and – let’s be honest – a bit of luck. One thing that experienced anglers do is that they
Leadership and Decision-Making
Leadership & Decision-Making by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions Why are decisions and their outcomes separate? What can you do to have decisions that drive results? Read on here…. Leadership requires courage and initiative. As such a leader needs to be willing to make a decision or take action. Decision-making is an act of leadership. But what is the decision-making process? We too often look at whether decisions are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for a given value of ‘good’ and