Loved by consultants, loathed by managers, benchmarking is a powerful tool for evidence-based decision making. Look Outside The essential point of benchmarking is to look outside your organisation and see what happens elsewhere. It sounds simple – idiotically simple – if it wasn’t for the fact that so all-consuming are the daily operations inside our …
To a gambler risk is a game. In commerce, risk creates wealth. In economics, it drives productivity. For investors, risk is something to be calculated then stared down. The normal language of risk and return is a bit too neutral for my taste. Risk is the name investors give to losing money. Losing money is …
Decisions are rarely as linear as making a big yes/no decision and then following the action before discovering, at the end, if you were right. Decision-support techniques however are often presented in this simplistic way. The emphasis is on the initial choice of action with little said about what happens next. This is fine in …
The higher you climb in your career the less you can get done personally, but the more powerful your words become. When you reach the top of very large organisations your voice is almost all you’ve got. The power or charisma of a person’s words is the main factor that distinguishes the person at the …
If all the taxes we pay – income, national insurance, VAT, council tax, duties – were presented in the form of a bill at the end of each year, it would be a shock. Most people are approaching ‘higher-rate’ amounts of tax without realising it. The table below illustrates the average tax rates paid at …