Inarticulate ramblings of a management consultant

the day to day experiences of a consultant operating in weird and wonderful client situations

Learning

Leave a comment

The rise of China’s serial acquirers – M&A China style appears to be a ‘non-contact’ sport!

According to Dealogic, 102 outbound Chinese transactions have been announced to date worth USD 81.6 billion up from USD 11.2 billion for the same period last year… Some of them have been truly momentous:  Haier’s intention to acquire the GE Appliance business, a business which is steeped in American corporate history. ChemChina’s bid for Syngenta, the sheer size of which is eye popping at USD 48 billion. HNA Group’s bid for […]

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

Changing your organisation – using the science of ‘segmentation’

As the UK election looms, in what looks to be one of the closest elections in many years, I’m drawn to speculating what the new swing vote category is going to be called…we’ve had ‘Worcester Woman’ from Tony Blair and ‘Basildon Man’ from Margaret Thatcher some years ago so what next? ‘Portsmouth Pensioner’? The grey vote appears to be a major battleground ‘Teviot Teenager”? Does the momentum of the Scottish […]

Continue Reading →

3 Comments

The changing face of the organisational structure…as defined by the new generation of employees

An interview recently conducted with Gary Hamel on the BBC World Service. Please click on the link below Peter Day; World of Business – interview with Gary Hamel This is worth 30 minutes of your time….I promise you. The key points from the interview: A call for a more dynamic approach to organisational structure and the commensurate implications for shareholders. Personal engagement of customers and shareholders in the lives of […]

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

Peer to peer training – the way forward

Recently, I’ve been investigating how children learn. It’s been an interesting discussion and has led me to some conclusions which are really relevant in the context of change management and learning in general within the corporate space. Whilst they are positive about their experiences with regard to their teachers, they also recognise the distance that exists between them. A distance which is probably a factor of age and perhaps experience. […]

Continue Reading →

2 Comments

Motivation is, by it’s very nature, personal!

We’ve just come back from climbing up to the crater rim at Mount Rinjani, on the island of Lombok, Indonesia. At 2671 metres, it’s a serious walk / scrabble and with the different weather challenges of tropical rainforest at the bottom and relatively cold at the top(at least for us thin blooded tropics dwellers), challenging for all of us on different levels. It was a great family experience and one […]

Continue Reading →

4 Comments

Dealing with inertia successfully – the example staring us in the face!

I wrote last week about inertia as the true killer of innovation and change. One or two of you were kind enough to comment and provide some further ammunition on the topic…which led me to try and scratch around to find examples of where the inertia of the 80% had truly be galvanised into action. Having a ginger beer or two with my friend Sanjeev Kumar in Hong Kong last […]

Continue Reading →

1 Comment

Think like a theatre director – and become an excellent programme manager

It’s rare to see a connection between the world of performing arts and the world of programme and project management….until you start to look at people’s non work based cvs. At that point, you start to see an incredible richness of experience, talent and focus dedicated towards the arts. So the question for me is, are there some aspects of the performing arts which help develop or naturally lend themselves to the […]

Continue Reading →

2 Comments

Life beyond powerpoint – the challenge of a mid afternoon 30 minute speaking slot with a virtual and in-room audience

During a recent book tour in Asia (for the very few who haven’t heard about or indeed read my book ‘Save the Silver Bullet’ (!) I was confronted with this particular challenge…and what a nightmare it is. Oren Klaff (author of ‘Pitch Anything’ an excellent book on sales in general) describes the challenge of a subject matter expert communicating his / her knowledge in a way which connects with the […]

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

Implementing strategy – from the bottom up – part 2

Last week, I tried to illustrate a classic top down implementation process in terms of the key problems that companies face. This week I’m going to try and describe how I’ve seen it work from a ‘bottom up’ approach. This is altogether more challenging for two main reasons: 1) Organisations rarely design their future strategy with the most junior members of the workforce in control or with much influence. The […]

Continue Reading →

2 Comments

Consulting for free – really!?

As I sit in the back of a blue bird taxi in Jakarta on a Tuesday night after a day of pitches…for those of you who haven’t been here, this is likely to take some time….I’m drawn to write about the plague that is increasing impacting consultants, specialist or generalist, local or international, small or large: the ‘try before you buy’ trend You know that things have started to take […]

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

Domain knowledge – the only thing that matters in consulting?!

A frequent complaint that one hears about consultants is that ‘one team sells’ but another delivers…the implication being that the more senior folk are involved in winning the work, but when it comes to delivery, it’s often handed to the less experienced with the expected consequences. Like all professions that deliver a service, the tendency is to try and win at all costs and think about delivery at a later […]

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

Do We Become Smarter? – Entity vs Incremental Intelligence

Originally posted on People-triggers:
Dr. Carol Dweck, Stanford University I’d like to introduce what is probably the most important concept I’ve every learned. In a way, I’m frustrated that I didn’t latch onto this insight until I was 35 years old, but by the same token, I’m relieved that I learned this in time to make better parenting decisions when the appropriate time comes. Does Intelligence Remain Fixed? Dr. Carol…

Continue Reading →

1 Comment

Moving from Subject Matter Expert to Consultant

Two interesting moments this week: I was asked by a client to work with his team to help them understand what it is to become consultants. Interesting mandate and many might say, why on earth would you want to do that? A powerful debate with a fellow consultant around the challenge behind being both a subject matter expert and a consultant. In preparing something for the first of these challenges, […]

Continue Reading →

3 Comments

Music training boosts IQ

Originally posted on BRAIN'S IDEA:
There are more and more brain training companies popping up which promise the same deal: improved intelligence. While there are doubts about their results, another sort of brain training has existed since the beginning of humanity: music. The evidence for its effectiveness is surprisingly strong. . Brain training in the 1930’s. . Over the years, researchers have noticed that people who have taken music…

Continue Reading →