• Surround yourself with smart people

    In The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business Harvey Schachter quotes Peggy Cunningham, Dean of Management at Dalhousie University in Halifax who says “…surround yourself with smart people who have different perspectives and different skills. Listen to them respectfully and attentively, draw out their ideas, and work to integrate their perspectives into your plans and solutions to problems.”[...]

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    What is a Controller?

    The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a controller as “a person in charge of expenditure esp. a steward or comptroller.”  According to Wikipedia “a comptroller is a management level position responsible for supervising the quality of accounting and financial reporting of an organization.” In Canada we often use the title Controller in a broader sense but I find that many businesses focus [...]

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    How to network socially - advance it for real results

    Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn - the names go on and on, and the task to get connected socially gets tougher and tougher.  No, it's really not a problem gaining more friends on Facebook, or a hundred extra Twitter followers, but is that really social networking? Making a momentary connection with someone that has 3,000 "followers" or "friends" does nothing for either party unless the [...]

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    8 reasons why you shouldn't do your own marketing

    Many leaders in today’s small and mid-size companies struggle with marketing. Change is so revolutionary that as soon as they learn something new it becomes out of date.  So how do they manage their marketing function if they haven’t formalized it in some way?  Do they have a plan and do they have resources to manage the day to day activities that make marketing so challenging to deal with? [...]

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    The Social Media Tapestry

    When social media became the new rage of marketing a few years back so many people saw it as the new holy grail.  In reality, this happens every few years as the new and the exciting takes over the imagination of the media who drive it incessantly until something newer and more exciting arrives and we follow that holy grail till it becomes passe. And so, each new innovation does not disappear, it[...]

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    How many ways can you market your company/product/service? A challenge...

    Have you ever taken five minutes to write down how many different ways there are to market a company?  A product?  A service?  Let me get you started: Advertising Social media Newsletters Blogs Business Cards SEO Media relations Writing articles Personal networking Testimonials Get the idea? Here's my challenge: take 5 minutes right now and see if you can beat my list - which is 150 strong [...]

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    Strategy on its own is not enough

    Graham Bowman is CEO of a manufacturing and distribution company.  He has grown the company from its birth and is very hands on as its chief executive.  But Graham is starting to experience growth pains as the company evolves into a corporate entity where management and delegation are required, rather than hands on execution.  Graham himself is struggling with the transition, as are his [...]

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    Business success starts with WHY

    We are slowly but surely evolving into an instant gratification society.  A society that looks for the quick answer and buys its way into satisfaction - or so we think.  If that satisfaction was so satisfying, why are we continually looking to satisfy ourselves even more with the next great widget or experience? This whole drive for instant gratification leads me to believe that people are on [...]

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    When is social media and digital marketing right for you?

    This question is often missed when people prepare their marketing strategies - most likely because they don't really ask the question.  Often people are blinded by the bright lights and sexy appeal of anything digital and they fail to ask the really pertinent questions that will help them with the correct answer. Before trying to find the answer to the question above, you should ask a few more [...]

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    What the world's business leaders are thinking

    A new IBM study of more than 1,700 Chief Executive Officers from 64 countries and 18 industries worldwide reveals that CEOs are changing the nature of work by adding a powerful dose of openness, transparency and employee empowerment to the command-and-control ethos that has characterized the modern corporation for more than a century. The advantages of the fast-moving trend are clear. [...]

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