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I was working with an engineering company last year, let’s call them Engineering-4-U to retain their anonymity, and they maintained a large team of highly-trained engineers to service and maintain their customers’ equipment throughout the UK.  The team worked long hours with lots of travelling required, but their pay and conditions weren’t great. I was … Continue reading “Treat the Cause not the Symptom”

In the last blog, I explained how we’d helped Additup Accountancy Ltd to put in place an efficient recruitment process, allowing them to recruit the best people that they can, and retain them.  Now, a failure to retain personnel can cause a small business no end of problems as one person leaving out of a … Continue reading “Motivation is Vital”

One of the more common problems encountered in business concerns the recruitment, training, loss, re-recruitment, re-training, etc., of personnel.  In larger corporations, this is just a normal way of life and they tend to have their own specific departments dedicated to organizing such.  However, in a small business, the loss of one or two members … Continue reading “Recruit in the right way”

The other day, I was asked to help a small business owner, let’s call him Fred, with a problem. One of his senior team, Bill, was causing a blockage in Fred’s management communication. In effect, to run a successful business, you must have in place what I call the “management pipework”. This is the “plumbing” … Continue reading “Why Bill likes his agendas, now”

One of the businesses with which I started working last year had a management system than was humming…not like a well-oiled machine, sadly, more like a rotting fish. They had a lot of the right components in place to have their operations purring like a cat, but they had problems keeping all their management review … Continue reading “A well oiled machine”

Since about 2005, I’ve been using a learning tool based on the number “5”, called The Five Pillars of Management and it’s very useful as a quick reminder of what you should be doing as a manager. These Five Pillars prompt you to: Find out what’s going on and decide what you’re going to do … Continue reading “The Five Pillars of Management”