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 →

I get too many emails. Now most days I do empty my in-tray – but I only manage to do that because I’m filing the emails in a series of sub-folders. And to be honest there are some sub-folders, e.g., the “to be read” one, that I hardly ever look in.   Last week, rather than just continue to let the number of archived emails increase, I decided to stem the tide – to reduce the number I receive.   So I started clicking unsubscribe buttons. So far it has been fairly simple – usually a one-click … Continue reading →

Some of you know I support Leeds.   (We’re talking football here!)   And you may remember a post I wrote back in April talking about Neil Warnock – the Leeds manager – and his failure to take responsibility for results. The team’s problems were always someone else’s fault.   At the time Leeds were in 12th position – 8 points adrift of the playoff positions.   Fast forward 10 months and earlier today Leeds were in guess what position?   Yep 12th!   And guess how many points adrift of the playoff position?   Yep – 8 … Continue reading →

One morning recently I tried contacting a government agency.  Things must have been very busy for them because…   Their phone was not being answered by a live human being.   Neither was it answered by one of those messages that directs you to press different numbers for different departments.   And neither was it possible to even leave a message.  No messages were being accepted.   And their answering message said to phone back in the afternoon.   How about that!   So things weren’t getting off to a very positive start!   However, because I … Continue reading →