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Culture

Leadership & Management

Thriving in a time of Complexity

Graham Birkenhead, March 19 2024

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, complexity seems to be a persistent constant. As business owners and CEOs, the challenge is not just to navigate this complexity but to thrive within it. We humans have been running businesses for a long time (several thousand years), so you'd think we would have a good handle on how to do that....

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Leadership & Management

What has Behavioural Economics ever done for us?

Graham Birkenhead, March 12 2024

As I talk to business owners, I often enquire as to what is high on their list of headache inducing issues - and the 2 that are most commonly mentioned are money and people. And it's been like that for many, many years. The specific details may change, but those 2 categories

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Leadership & Management

The Answers are Out There ...

Graham Birkenhead, February 27 2024

And while we can look at the legacy of human endeavour for many answers to today's questions, there is a much richer and older source of inspiration and ideas that could help us solve many of our more tactical and systemic challenges.    And that is the natural world around us.  Over millions or billions of years of evolution, living organisms...

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Leadership & Management

Dictum Meum Pactum

Andrew Penny, February 6 2024

The London Stock exchange, founded in 1571, has the motto “dictum meum pactum” on its coat of arms. It shows that members of the exchange are literally bound by what they say – without need of a written contract.  In more modern times we would say, ‘my word is as good as my

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Leadership & Management

Look Differently

Graham Birkenhead, January 30 2024

We've probably all seen starlings.  Brownish birds that hang around in groups, often with quite thuggish behaviour as they swarm a food source to the exclusion of all other birds.  If you look a  little closer, you might notice that when they catch the light, there seems to be some iridescence to their feathers - and if you stand back you...

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Leadership & Management

The Edge of Chaos

Graham Birkenhead, January 16 2024

You don't build a business – you build people – and then people build the business. Zig Ziglar I was recently running a workshop for a client to address the way they worked (their processes and organisational structures) and they way they worked together (communications and culture). During the energised conversation, I was reminded once again...

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Leadership & Management

Every Link in a Chain is Critical

Graham Birkenhead, October 31 2023

Small and medium-sized businesses constitute the backbone of the North American economy. They make up a staggering 98% of all businesses and generate approximately 40% of total business revenue. Of those, around 60 to 70% are supplying other businesses (B2B) - as opposed to serving an end customer directly (B2C).  Therefore, most businesses are...

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Customer Sales

Kano Coffee Shop

Graham Birkenhead, October 24 2023

I spend a lot of time in coffee shops.  I enjoy a good cup of coffee, fresh baking, ambiance, meeting people, and the opportunity to be somewhere different while trying to work.   Many coffee shops meet my needs, but I don't particularly have one that I always go to, I am indifferent to their differences. That was until recently. I found a new...

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Leadership & Management

The Power of Purpose

Graham Birkenhead, August 1 2023

A sense of purpose is a crucial element of the well-being of any individual. Similarly, a sense of purpose can be a crucial aspect of any company’s culture and health. We like to think of a company’s purpose as being something much bigger than the company itself, something the company maybe couldn't achieve alone, something that they would...

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Leadership & Management

How do I have an environmental impact? Let me count the ways

Graham Birkenhead, July 18 2023

Most businesses do not have ESG reporting requirements; but there is increasing societal expectation that businesses will do the ‘right thing’.  Considering the environmental aspect of ESG, as the impact of climate change becomes more felt and real to larger proportions of the population (rather than abstract and something people elsewhere...

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