Category handle problems

Entries 63 Total

The rate of insolvency is not helped by lies, damn lies and statistics

Dec 22, ’11 6:36 PM
Author Adrian Swinscoe Categories Finance, Recession Survival, Small Business / SOHO, handle problems

I saw a couple of news stories today that were reporting on new figures that have come out of Experian on the number of business insolvencies in different parts of the UK.

The first (Huge rise in insolvencies, but London fares better than rest of the UK) was from Londonlovesbusiness.com and looks at the November statistics compared to the same time last year. The graphic below is from their site graphs the Experian data.
Experian stats on insolvencies UK
The second (North/South business insolvency divide begins to widen) was from Business Matters and looks at the month on month data over this year.

There were a few things that occurred to me when I saw these two articles:
1.    Both articles had the same data but came up with two very different stories
2.    Don’t always believe what you read in the press.
3.    Both are right and not right at the same time.
4.    Everyone has their own agenda.

My Christmas wish for all of us in business: Read press like this less, talk to friends and your trusted advisors more, be more open, ask for help early and even if you don’t need it and let’s work together to make sure these statistics (whichever ones are true) don’t get worse.

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Comments · Email this · Subscribe RSS · Share on Facebook · Tweet · Permalink

Courtesy, riots, customer service and employee engagement

Dec 8, ’11 8:51 AM
Author Adrian Swinscoe Categories Business Marketing, Customer Service, do customer service, handle problems

Over the last few days a series of reports by Parliament, the police and the press have been released looking into the cause of England’s August riots. You can read an overview in the BBC article: Were the riots caused by bad manners?

In each of the reports, one trend/word/observation/conclusion….call it what you will has emerged. Many people many jump in and guess that it might be ‘unemployment’ or ‘parenting’ or ‘greed’ or ‘criminal’. However, you’d be wrong. The word that has come up in all of the reports is ‘courtesy’ and, particularly, the lack of it by police officers conducting stop and search in many of the areas where the riots took place. The reports suggest that this was a “significant factor in sparking the disturbances”.

Now, I am not condoning the riots. Not at all. The destruction and lawlessness that took place was completely wrong and all perpetrators should be punished.

But, the reports made me think about the breakdown of relationships between the police, youth and local communities and, particularly, how if you don’t start relationships off on the right foot then it’s all down there from there.

Being courteous doesn’t mean you have to agree with someone it just means that you are being polite. Here’s how I think it all links together in a chain:

Courtesy
leads to
Respect
which leads to
Real conversation
and
Trust
which helps
Relationships
to develop thus enabling
Actions
to be agreed and
Solutions
to be delivered

Take one of these links out of the chain and it collapses or we get something that is a lot less than what we want

Now, you may ask what has all of this got to do with small businesses and customers? Everything, I would say. This chain could applied to customer service, team management, leadership, employee engagement, police and community relations, parenting, schooling, marketing….everything.

Time to be more courteous to everyone?

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Comments · Email this · Subscribe RSS · Share on Facebook · Tweet · Permalink

Problem Solving – Small Business Quote of the Day

Feb 9, ’09 12:18 PM
Author newsdemon Categories Business Quotations, handle problems

A small business quote a day keeps you thinking, inspired and entertained 

“The problem when solved will be simple.”

Anonymous, Sign on the wall of the General Motots research laboratory at Dayton ,Ohio . Quoted in Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (Al Ries & Jack Trout; 1981) 

To find previous Quotes of the Day look here 

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Comments · Email this · Subscribe RSS · Share on Facebook · Tweet · Permalink

Problem Solving – Small Business Quote of the Day

Feb 2, ’09 12:13 PM
Author newsdemon Categories Business Quotations, handle problems

A small business quote a day keeps you thinking, inspired and entertained 

“Threat is dealt with by defensive reasoning… This in turn, produces learning systems in organizations that are actually against understanding how to deal with threatening issues so they can be eliminated.”

Chris Argyris (b. 1923) US academic & organisational behaviour theorist, Strategy, Change and Defensive Routines (1985) 

To find previous Quotes of the Day look here 

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Comments · Email this · Subscribe RSS · Share on Facebook · Tweet · Permalink

Problem Solving – Small Business Quote of the Day

Jan 26, ’09 2:00 PM
Author newsdemon Categories Business Quotations, handle problems

A small business quote a day keeps you thinking, inspired and entertained 

“You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem.”

Eldridge Cleaver (1935-98)US civil rights activist, speech, San Francisco (1968) 

To find previous Quotes of the Day look here 

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Comments · Email this · Subscribe RSS · Share on Facebook · Tweet · Permalink

Problem Solving – Small Business Quote of the Day

Jan 19, ’09 3:06 PM
Author newsdemon Categories Business Quotations, handle problems

A small business quote a day keeps you thinking, inspired and entertained 

“A gentleman can withstand hardships; it is only the small man who, when submitted to them, is swept off his feet.”

Confucius (551-479 BC) Chinese philosopher, administrator & writer, Analects  (7500 BC) 

To find previous Quotes of the Day look here 

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Comments · Email this · Subscribe RSS · Share on Facebook · Tweet · Permalink

Problem Solving – Small Business Quote of the Day

Jan 12, ’09 4:40 PM
Author newsdemon Categories Business Quotations, handle problems

A small business quote a day keeps you thinking, inspired and entertained 

“We must bear in mind that the statistical relationships we work with, embodied in our econometric models, are only loose approximations of the underlying reality… Some fog always obstructs our vision, but when the structure of the economy is changing, the fog is considerably denser than at other times.”

Roger W. Ferguson Jr (b. 1951) US economist, vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. On the problems facing the Federal Reserve Board in deciding policy. Speech, New Economy Forum, HaasSchool ofBusiness , University ofCalifornia ‘Conversation with Leaders of the “New Economy”’ (9 May 2000) 

To find previous Quotes of the Day look here 

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Comments · Email this · Subscribe RSS · Share on Facebook · Tweet · Permalink

Problem Solving – Small Business Quote of the Day

Jan 5, ’09 5:36 PM
Author newsdemon Categories Business Quotations, handle problems

A small business quote a day keeps you thinking, inspired and entertained 

“What is the answer to the question? The problem. How is the problem resolved? By displacing the question… We tmust think problematically rather than question and answer dialectically.”

Michel Foucault (1926-84) French philosopher, ‘Theatrum Philosophicum’, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (1977) 

To find previous Quotes of the Day look here 

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Comments · Email this · Subscribe RSS · Share on Facebook · Tweet · Permalink

Problem Solving – Small Business Quote of the Day

Dec 29, ’08 7:06 PM
Author newsdemon Categories Business Quotations, choose your office, handle problems

A small business quote a day keeps you thinking, inspired and entertained 

“If key aspects of the business shift around you, the very process of genetic selection that got you and your associates where you are might retard your ability to recognize the new trends. A sign of this might be that all of a sudden some people ‘don’t seem to get it’… When they don’t get it or you don’t get it, it may not be because of encroaching age; it may be because the ‘it’ has changed around you.”

Andrew S. Grove (b. 1936) US entrepreneur, author & chairman of Intel Corporation. Referring to the signs of an approaching strategic inflection point, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company and Career (1996) 

To find previous Quotes of the Day look here 

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Comments · Email this · Subscribe RSS · Share on Facebook · Tweet · Permalink

Problem Solving – Small Business Quote of the Day

Dec 22, ’08 11:55 PM
Author newsdemon Categories Business Quotations, handle problems

A small business quote a day keeps you thinking, inspired and entertained 

“Problems can only be solved by the people who have them. You have to try and coax them and love them into seeing ways in which they can help themselves.”

John Harvey-Jones (1924-2008) British management adviser, author & former chairman of ICI, on his approach as a ‘Mr Fix-It’ for troubled businesses, Independent on Sunday (11 March 1990) 

To find previous Quotes of the Day look here 

Leave your writing (comments) on our wall.

Comments · Email this · Subscribe RSS · Share on Facebook · Tweet · Permalink