This time next week, the world’s strongest economy will be choosing who will lead it. Over the last four years, the world has seen the impact of a particular style of leadership that will have an impact for years to come. There is much we can learn from that leadership.Here's what we can learn.In difficult times, people look for strong leaders, pe...
Read MoreOver the last few weeks we've been talking to a number of companies in Latvia that are interested in exporting to North America. These companies include metal fabrication, construction products, IT services and many other areas. For the most part they are well established firms trading in Europe and Scandinavia with a wide range of products and se...
Read MoreOur world is built on tectonic plates that shift slowly and surely under our feet. Occasionally the plates ‘stick’ until the pressure builds up sufficiently to ‘unstick’ them in what we call an earthquake Much like an earthquake, the pandemic has caused many of the trends underlying the world we have built to move very quickly. Political, social, b...
Read MoreIf you are like me, you have seen a whole range of backgrounds while on video calls. There are the digital backgrounds that flicker in and out like a bad version of the matrix. The bright background and badly lit faces that leave you wondering what people are saying. The ‘up the nose shot’ by people who don’t raise their camera. The ‘too much infor...
Read MoreAs the world starts to rebound, many of us are planning to expand our teams. And with that comes a once in a lifetime opportunity to rethink how we engage with and hire new people. Here are some observations: • For many of us, our new people can be located anywhere in the world – this provides huge opportunities in diversity (local knowledge/langu...
Read MoreAh yes. Sales. That fine art of connecting buyers with products and services that satisfy their needs, wants and, possibly, their desires. Post-pandemic, do we just pick up where we left off? Of course not. But what is different and what do we do? Face-to-face retail sales are shifting increasingly to convenience (I want my tomatoes, my drill bit,...
Read MoreIn 1840 70% of the North American workforce worked on farms. There the work was pretty straightforward and relatively easy to manage – the manure got shovelled or it didn’t. The hierarchy was fairly flat – those with the shovel and those without. The industrial revolution saw work start to migrate away from the farms and into the factories where...
Read MoreMy Dad always told me that I needed to have a clear sense of the line between right and wrong and once established – to never cross the line. He also said it was completely up to me where I drew that line. The outcome is that people know what to expect and how to trust and work with me consistently.
Read MoreThe global pandemic is affecting businesses in many different waysSome of us will sinkSome of us will manage to surviveSome of us will thrive. What happens to us will be partly luck and partly what we do. And that’s the key – it’s about what we, as business owners, chose to do. Sure, we can lobby our governments to get support, handouts, grants, ta...
Read MoreA friend in Florida, Tim Parkin, runs a consulting business advising marketing departments on how best to increase their productivity. He is steadily growing his business – despite the work from home advisories and lockdowns (hey, isn't that a prison term?) He of course is leveraging social media to create new awareness and new contacts. He wants...
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