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If Only they’d Seen Things Differently…

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” (Charles H Duell, Commissioner, US Patent Office, 1899.) “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” (HM Warner, Warner Bros, 1927.) “We don’t like their sound and guitar music is on the way out.” (Decca Recording Company rejecting the Beatles, 1962.) “You ain’t goin’ nowhere son. You […]

Academy Speaker Celynn Erasmus on Strategic Refueling For Mental Agility

What we put into our bodies is what we’ll get out of them. Much like a car, you need to refuel before you run out of petrol! The key to maintaining our physical energy and peak mental agility is to switch from being a ‘gorger’ to a ‘grazer’ i.e. instead of waiting till you’re absolutely […]

Get your R’s in Gear to Improve your Customer Service

– By Gerry Brown Today’s customers are impatient, fickle and increasingly vocal about being forgotten in long phone queues, let down by poor web sites and misunderstood by disinterested or powerless customer service agents. And there’s nothing like a powerful personal experience to remind us just what good customer service entails – and just how […]

New Ideas Make You Money

By David J Hall The world is changing at an ever-increasing pace. But the decisions that we make and the behaviours that we display are often based on models of reality that are rooted in the past. They are therefore increasingly likely to be out of date.  This lag in our thinking generates a gap between […]

Fighting Fires Without Burning Bridges – How 21st Century Businesses are Learning to Slash the Cost of Conflict

By Jane Gunn When conflicts and disputes arise, the majority of companies are ill equipped to deal with them in a timely and efficient way so that escalation and rising costs are the norm. Take the following story as an example. An IT company struggles to find the right fit for a new HR Director. […]

I’m not an economist BUT …. by Roger Harrop

… a look at history shows us clearly that nations prosper by trading across their borders. This has be true – whether it was the UK in the 19th century, the US, Japan and Germany in the 20th or China and, increasingly, India now. It may be that nations have abundant and valuable natural resources […]

Systematically Delighting Your Customers

Academy Team for The Bottom Line Solutions 4 Cleaning won the British Chambers of Commerce business award for Excellence in Customer Service in 2011 against considerable opposition which included Marriott Hotels and BT. Kevin Kerley, who has since exited the business but remains in close contact with them, explained to me that for a small, […]

Moving Forward with Confidence through Testing Times – by Andrew B Morris

This month we look at the outlook for businesses as we enter the final quarter of 2011 and finalise planning for 2012. I think we can safely say that we live in ‘interesting times’. It might be better to live in more predictable times but it is not our fate to do so. We need […]

Exiting your business – what you should know (including how to maximise profit!) … by Simon Lester

Planning a successful exit … or put another way “Taking the fastest route to the biggest profit with the least resistance!” Most business owners have plans to exit their business at some point and there are many elements that combine to ensure a successful exit. Grooming the business for sales is obviously paramount, but in […]

Getting the best out of your team following a re-structure

The Academy for Chief Executives, a leading provider of experiential business learning® facilitates groups of CEOs and Managing Directors who meet together every month to network and take full advantage of peer group learning. Part of membership involves members taking their issues to the table and discussing them with their peers. At a recent meeting, […]