Barry’s key trait is his Integrity. To my mind, this is foundation of any successful business engagement. Barry worked with our Senior Team on Performance Management and our experience was extremely positive. An excellent learning experience that spurred positive change with an equally beneficial return on investment. Gene Browne CEO, The City Bin Co.

This unique approach to Performance Management gives your team ownership of their roles and responsibilities AND the deliverables they are accountable for.

Contact me now for a no obligation discussion about your situation

An eRumor that did the rounds a while back tells a great story.

Summary of eRumor: A racist passenger on a British Airways flight from Johannesburg objects to being seated next to a black man. She asks for another seat. The flight attendant says the flight is full, but that she’ll check. She later returns to say there is one seat in first class and that the captain of the plane has approved a transfer to that seat because he feels that someone should not have to sit next to such an obnoxious person. The flight attendant then turns to the black man and invites him to the first class seat to the cheers and applause of other passengers.

True or False? Who Cares. What can we learn?

Good story, I like it.

Hope you’re not badly affected by the ban on air travel in Europe this week due to the volcanic ash cloud from Island.
I was supposed to fly to Boston today for a week with work but no go.
Instead I now have a week gifted to me. What will I do?

Have a good week,
Barry

You do have a strategy for your business, don’t you?

Good ideas need good strategy to realize their potential.

Reid Hoffman (American entrepreneur and angel investor. Hoffman is best known as the founder of LinkedIn)

I continue to be amazed at how many business leaders I meet who don’t have a strategy for their business. To boot they more often don’t have a strategy for themselves! Most have ambitions to be very successful and yet don’t have a strategy to get there.

Those that do have a strategy are guilty of the next worse sin; not having the strategy developed by the senior team.

I’ll write about this again. For now, here are the top most common situations I find in Irish SMEs. (and I don’t believe they are limited to SMEs)

1. No Strategy
   Just traveling from one day to the next! Usually firefighting. The inner voice is saying “We’re too busy to do that stuff, we have a business to run, costs to cut, sales to make, we’re trying hard to survive!”
2. Strategy is in one persons head
   Usually the owner/MD. He started the business and has been pursuing a strategy since then. It’s worked till now so why change? “I know our strategy, I employ managers to manage, we have a business to run you know”.
3. Nothing Documented
   Often there is a good strategy but it’s not captured anywhere. Quite often because of this it’s not shared. As a result it’s unclear. And often it’s not implemented, at least not in any coordinated way.
4. Strategy is Fixed
   Some leaders think strategy is a once off exercise. “Oh yea, we did our strategy three years ago, here it is”. Strategy is a fluid process, it changes as often as markets/competitors change, economy fluctuates, technology changes, consumer demands change. I can here you ask how do we change our strategy as often as this? Answer = you need a ‘Strategy Tale’, a story that is kept alive all the time in the boardroom, canteen, out on sales calls, etc.
5. Leadership is lacking
   To develop and  execute strategy requires big picture thinking followed by attention to detail action. I find either one or the other (usually the latter). I rarely find both together. What’s more there is a serious lack of awareness that these qualities are required. What’s more again is that there is no plan or strategy to develop them. This is where the personal leadership plan comes in.

I could go on. And so I will. I think I will write a little article on this subject. After all it is my expertise area: developing strategy and teams to execute!

It’s interesting to see what companies are doing to develop brand loyalty.
1. American Express have launched a new service Openforum.com to improve cash flow for small businesses click here .It’s free for up to 15 invoices a month then you pay to upgrade.
2. Namethis.com This is a site that helps you come up with names for products or startups. You pay $99 to put up a challenge describing the product or entity to be named, the community suggests names and votes for the best ones by investing their allotted ‘Watts.” The people who come up with, influence, or invest the most in the top three names split $80 among themselves, and Kluster keeps the rest as its fee. Click here
3. Google Gadgets: Part of Google Spreadsheets this allows you to insert gadgets to display data in a variety of ways. The following is a list of gadgets created by Google, though you can use a variety of additional third-party gadgets as well. Click here Check out the Motion Chart; it’s quite impressive for presenting a lot of information dynamically.

If you know of any useful free tools out there to help business be more effective then please let us know?

Oh. This reminds me of www.businessballs.com A great resource for templates etc or as they say themselves

free templates, samples, resources, examples, articles, tools and diagrams, tests and quizzes – free materials for download – for training, human resources, management theory, sales, business, personal and organizational development

Based in Carrickmacross this manufacturer of bailers for compressing recycling material had already changed direction completely from making moulds for the construction industry. They saw the potential in the ‘Green’ sector and followed the money.

They engaged Barry Walsh to help them get funds from Enterprise Ireland and develop a strategy that would position them competitively on the world stage. This involved a succession plan, management development, lean manufacturing and more.

Benefits:
* €2M freed up from Stock
* €650 EI grant to buy capital equipment, fund recruitment of a new key manager and fund a management development programme
* Lead time down from 54 to 3 days
* Costs down 25%

Contact me now for a no obligation discussion about how to make your company competitive on the world stage.