Recently I was doing some weeding in my mother’s garden – a garden where my brother-in-law is working on turning some of his fingers green.   Well it transpires I actually wasn’t weeding.  I found this out when my brother-in-law came running over to me telling me in extremely colourful language to leave his carrots alone – the carrots he had lovingly grown from seed!   Now he and I get along very well.  And I’m glad we do – partly because he’s 4 inches taller than me and about 25 lbs heavier!   We got over our … Continue reading →

When you make a mistake do you try and hide it?  Or maybe jump through hoops in an effort to explain?  Or perhaps offer a conditional apology?   Conditional apologies drive me nuts.   A recent example occurred last week when the Irish Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter, was speaking in the Dáil.  (The Dáil is the lower house of Ireland’s legislative branch.)   Minister Shatter said “If Deputy Wallace feels that I did him some personal wrong by mentioning it, then I have no problem in saying I am sorry.”   The deputy in question, Mick … Continue reading →

On Monday I was in Dublin for meetings with existing and prospective customers.  When the work was finished I took a few minutes to enjoy the sunshine on a park bench in the wonderful St. Stephen’s Green.   I found myself looking at the pigeons.  And they were ALL fat.  (Excuse the poor resolution of the photo – hopefully there’ll be more megapixels on my next phone upgrade!)   But back to the pigeons…   Why were they fat?   It’s obvious – they know where to find food.   And where do they find the food?  Yep – … Continue reading →

My sons were sick yesterday so I took some time off to spend with them. They improved as the day wore on and we ended up outside playing football.   I was in goals and Aidan (6) took a shot which I managed to save. “Great save” I exclaimed. “Self praise is no praise” was his retort. We laughed. I’ve been trying to teach him humility and he had turned the tables.   The incident reminded me of the regularity with which companies and organisations blow their own trumpet – without any basis for so doing.   … Continue reading →

Recently I was working with a client who sells a high-value product to consumers and we were reviewing the state of his business.  The review included a look at customer satisfaction – as he seemingly “got” the importance of satisfied customers.   When I probed this with him he told me proudly that it had been 2 years since they had received a complaint.  It wasn’t said smugly – just in a pleased and self-satisfied way.  He took it as an affirmation – and to a degree he was right.   But guess what?  When I probed … Continue reading →

In your business what do you do when you have a failure? Do you recognise it as such? Or do you make excuses?   If you do recognise it as such, do you diagnose what it is that you did wrong?   If you do diagnose what you did wrong do you plan to remedy whatever is within your control?   And do you follow through on those remedial plans?   All of us can and should be able to answer YES to those 4 questions.   We (Ireland) have our work cut out this evening to … Continue reading →

For your business you’ll nearly always want to know why something is happening – not just that it is happening.   You don’t want to know why simply out of curiosity.  That’s useless.  You want to know why so that you can take action.   Imagine a customer satisfaction survey shows you that your customers are less happy than they were before.  Ok – that should set the alarm bells ringing – as you can expect a downturn in sales – and you could suffer reputational damage.  So you need to find out why they are less … Continue reading →

My mother turns 90 next week.  I’m bringing her to a concert in the National Concert Hall in Dublin.   The online booking form included the question : “Would you like to receive details as to events… by Email”.  “Yes” and “No” were available from a pull-down menu – but neither was pre-selected.  However it was necessary to answer the question before proceeding.   That was an approach I hadn’t seen before.  The Concert Hall wants its customers to join its email list but there is no cheeky default “Yes” that needed to be de-selected.   You’re … Continue reading →