Author: admin

The new year is firmly underway now, like an elegant cruise liner that has slipped past the breakwater at the end of the harbour and is now ploughing ahead into a rolling sea. Already I have managed to cram two working weeks and a mini-break into the first week back (thank you Centre Parcs) and am now typing this as I pack for a short business trip, print an invoice and shuffle through a small, but insistent, pile of emails.

And I bet that you’re doing something similar too!

I’m wondering what I could do to change things around and make better use of my time (there is always waste in any system and new performance improvements to be had) …and so I wonder what you would like to change in your business?

Maybe we could delegate more work to one of our support colleagues, maybe we could hire an office space and travel less, maybe we could stop a project dead in its tracks?

When we plan our business year ahead it’s tempting to add new things to our work flow and yet how often do we balance that by stopping, or curtailing, a project? Sometimes it makes sense to prune back our commitments.

And often there is one central pivot around which successful change revolves. Previously I changed the way I organised my sales activity and – hey presto – I became more effective and have successfully grown my business. Nothing else mattered as much as this – a heap of tiny tweaks would not have had as much impact on my turnover.

This week have a think about making a key change – you can start, stop, simplify or combine activities. Make a good choice for a good business year!

If you’d like to email me with your change for this year I’d be delighted to hear from you!

Next week: Design-in Time For Fun

Happy New Year and welcome to the wonderful world of 2015. Where all our dreams will come true, all customers will pay on time and all traffic will flow smoothly.

Of course life may not be exactly like that for us and yet we can still improve things with a handy New Year resolution or two. We do have some power over our business destiny!

Before we make any rash promises to ourselves I suggest we stop.

Stop and think about what has worked well for us in 2014 and what was less effective. It seems pointless to have any kind of resolution that past experience tells us is highly likely to fail – instead we can learn from the past and improve the future.

When I think back 12 months, to what I changed for 2014, the answer I come up with is a solid and determined focus on sales activity. Sounds a bit simple I know and yet I meet a lot of skilled consultants who take a haphazard and half-hearted approach to getting more business. What has worked well for me was hiring a sales PA to help me focus on monthly sales review meetings. We spend time discussing progress and setting activities for the next four weeks and (here’s the thing) because it’s a team effort it is…

A) Much more fun than doing it alone.

B) More likely to happen as it’s more fun.

…I like company and there’s no reason why business has to be a lonely trudge to retirement…where’s the fun in that?

My PA is great. And so am I. And so are my clients. I’m keeping my 2014 resolution for another year, as it would be madness to stop now!

So, this week have a think – what did you do well in 2014 that you need to keep doing this year? What did you learn from last year’s resolutions?

Next week: Change one thing…