Directors Briefings Resources for busy professionals Every now and again as a consultant, manager or business adviser we need to put our hands on short, accurate and trusted materials covering a wide range of topics. In a previous blog entry I highlighted some of the fact-sheets available from the CIPD most of which are open to any web site visitor. In the same way that the CIPD fact-sheets provide HR based material the The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAWE) … [Read more...]
GDPR Get your head out the sand – Part 2 for sole traders and Micro businesses
GDPR is just around the corner and it is time to get your head out of the sand if you are a sole trader or micro-business. In my recent piece - GDPR Checklist – for sole traders and Micro businesses, I summarised my learning on the recent journey for RapidBI. In that journey, I thought I had covered 99% of the bases. But it seems I missed one KEY POINT. And this one is a big one! I have since added it, but as many won't read all the piece I thought it worth a short piece of its own. ICO … [Read more...]
What did he say? #GDPR?
Find out more on our GDPR summary page aimed at sole trainers and micro business #GDPR #security #cybersecurity … [Read more...]
Book Review – Who the hell wants to work for you by Tim Eisenhauer
This is a great employee engagement & leadership 307-page book. It asks a great question, "Who the hell wants to work for you?". A refreshing approach to leadership that is more self-reflective than preaching. An approach not uncommon in this genre of management/ business book. This is a light, but substantial read. About the author, Tim Eisenhauer is Cofounder and president of Axero who have developed a social collaboration platform. Interestingly a tool that started out as a customer … [Read more...]
Deep-Dive Brainstorming Technique – IDEO
What is the Deep-Dive™ Brainstorming technique? Deep-Dive™ is the name of a technique used to rapidly immerse a group or team into a situation for problem-solving or idea creation. This approach is often used for brainstorming product or process development. History of Deep Dive Originally developed by the IDEO group (a learning design company) for rapid product development, the Deep-Dive technique is now widely and increasingly used for innovation not only in product development but process … [Read more...]
Amazon Kindle, trainers and a Virtual Library
Amazon Kindle, trainers and a virtual library Technology is changing all the time, but one thing that has moved (historically) least is display technology. Is the Kindle e-book reader from Amazon a valuable tool for professionals? Is it worth the money and more importantly the weight and space in our already busy lives? The launch of "virtual paper" (e-Ink) displays is one of the 'newer' technologies, and being in a household that devours books I thought it was time to explore these, both for … [Read more...]
GDPR Checklist – for sole traders and Micro businesses
Data protection law changes on 25 May 2018 for all of us in Europe & beyond. There is a lot of information out there but little about GDPR for Sole Traders and Micro-Businesses UPDATED 14 MAY to include ICO registration requirements The law on data protection says what you should do when you collect, use, store or do anything else with people’s personal data. This law changes on 25 May 2018. As a freelance or independent professional (working as a sole trader or micro-business/ … [Read more...]
Reviewing employee performance through effective communication
Reviewing performance through good communications As the snow recedes our thoughts turn to the spring and the unpopular annual appraisal season. Why are appraisals or performance reviews dreaded by some and feared by others? Many managers despair at the thought of stopping work as they see it to have to prepare and then interview their team members. This stoppage, of course, is accompanied by a complicated, sometimes arcane system which does not look as if it has anything to do with the tasks … [Read more...]
Why are we so bad at communicating and presentations
Are we catering to all our employees' needs? Are we really aware of everyone's disability? Why are most of us being discriminating? Why do we put some of the people we should be supporting at a disadvantage? A few months ago I had personal reasons to look at the material I was producing for clients. Are we as professional communicators providing the best service we can? Or are we providing what looks good to our immediate paymasters? Am I blind? A few months ago I was unfortunate to … [Read more...]
Organizational Development a true path to strategic development?
Organizational Development a true path to strategic development? - getting holistic Traditionally Organizational Development (OD) was mainly concerned with the three S’s of an organisation: Structures Staff and Skills Specialists and consultants practising in Organizational Development would look at an organization and identify its stage of growth or maturity. This would form the basis of a ‘diagnosis’ and an initial plan for change and developmental action. There are many variants of … [Read more...]
6 Steps to Successfully Setting Up a Marketing Automation Campaign
We all know that writing and processing content for your content marketing strategy is thirsty work. The entire process is time-consuming, and you never know whether or not your hard work is going to pay off until you’ve published it unless you’re prepared. One of the best ways to save yourself some time so you can focus on promoting your content and writing content to the highest possible quality for the highest possible engagement rates is to automate some of your processes. If … [Read more...]
What is a business blog? A marketing tool?
What is a Blog? Lets look at the background behind this technology, so we can understand where it is coming from. Research into the history behind blogs suggests that it was Pyra Labs is the company that adopted the word Blogger, and made the service a big success (now known as Google blogger/ blogspot). The people that were the co-founders of Pyra Labs were Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan. "Pyra" was also the name of the company's first product. It was a web based application which combined a … [Read more...]
PRIMO-F Model for Business Development
PRIMO-F the Business Growth Model Often in organizations we use a SWOT analysis as a way of identifying priorities and areas for improvement. While theSWOT is a wonderfully flexible tool, it is too easy to miss out key elements. We tend to use a SWOT based on our experiences, rather than the actual situational needs. As SWOT analysis is made up of two internal elements (SW) and two external elements (OT) it is helpful to use a structure to give us a guide for what should be … [Read more...]
The Insanity of looking at the “wrong” LinkedIn metrics on articles
Looking at the wrong LinkedIn metrics? Are you guilty of looking and focusing on inefficient LinkedIn metrics? There are some an old sayings, Just because you can measure something, does not mean you should. And What gets measured gets done. Looking at the wrong LinkedIn metrics? Why do we focus on some metrics and not others? Dowe look at the right or wrong LinkedIn metrics? I was at a networking event recently and the talk was about LinkedIn Posts/ articles and … [Read more...]
Why blog? Is it a Marketing tool?
Why blog? For some time I have been promoting Twitter as a good thing for people running small businesses to do, but recently I have been asked “why blog” and what is the value to small businesses and freelance consultants and trainers. I guess that because I have been doing this for some time that I overlooked the basics. This article is the first is a short series to show why and how to blog for business. People and business blog for a wide range of reasons including: Providing a “space to … [Read more...]
5 Female Leaders Paving The Way For Others
A study by Harvard Business School found that businesses had a higher collective IQ score when their team included females in the top positions of the company. Female input at the top has also been found to enhance business equity by 53%. Further, women leaders can produce a 42% increase in sales revenue. These statistics and results from many other studies show that women’s unique skills and attributes significantly bolster a business's success. Former CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman, told … [Read more...]
CIPD factsheets – an A-to-Z of HR topics & resources
CIPD factsheets - essential information for any manager & practitioner An A-to-Z of HR and management related factors is an easy to read and easy to apply style. The CIPD produce a wonderful set of regularly updated and reviewed factsheets on a wide range of HR and management based topics., While some are available to members only, the majority are available to all. This pages lists those available as at January 2010. Please note all links open in new windows. UPDATE … [Read more...]
What can Learning & Development learn from childrens education part 2 #VR #hrblog #edtech #learningtechnologies
So what can Learning & Development learn from children's education and the use of virtual reality? Recently I attended one of Europe largest exhibitions for technology in education. The show is called BETT and took place in London's ExCel Centre. In my last blog I wrote about the robots I saw in the education space and explored how they could be used in the business world within the future of work. VR was everywhere And before as a reader you start thinking these things cost … [Read more...]
What can Learning & Development learn from childrens education part 1 #hrblog #edtech #learningtechnologies
So what can Learning & Development learn from children's education? Recently I attended one of Europe largest exhibitions for technology in education. The show is called BETT and took place in London's ExCel Centre. BETT describes itself as being for: If you’re a Learning and Training Professional, come to Bett to discover how technology can improve and enhance learning, from school to Higher Education and workplace learning. Although I saw little directed at workplaces directly. That … [Read more...]
Competencies – are they dead? Or are we ignoring the true 3 core competencies?
Competencies – are they dead? Are competencies and how HR (and managers/ professional bodies) often relate to them irrelevant in today's business world? Do we actively ignore true core competencies? I was at a training workshop recently, and the trainer was talking about competencies. He was talking about the fact that the core competencies had changed in that profession. That new course materials were being developed all the time to ensure. We see this is every profession and industry. … [Read more...]
