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Delegation, done better. Top tips to delegate like a boss
I find myself encouraging leadership teams to increase their capacity to have an impact on their business by delegating more often. It’s easy to say but many people find it difficult to execute. The reason delegation is challenging is that often it is boiled down to a too simple boilerplate, ‘delegate and elevate’. But without…
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Meditative, optimistic and ruthlessly sharp. Why Secateurs make for the perfect client gift…
It has been funny (*insert your own adjective*) old year. When it came to client gifts I wanted to send something that considered the – frankly bizarre – last 12 months, but also put some focus on the future. No pressure then. On contemplation, I had a number of options for the etc 2020 Christmas…
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Culture Speaks Quietly – A Story
A lovely story from the Founder of Huit Denim, David Hieatt. As a kid, my dad told me about the companies he had worked for as an electrician in the Merchant Navy. There was only one he loved. He told me stories about them that made them stand out. Like after a long flight, they…
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Calendly: wonderfully effective or just plain rude?
The response to a recent post on Linkedin about the use of Calendly (a diary management app) was significantly more heated than I had expected. Is it the best and most effective way to manage our time, or will clients see it as just plain rude? Some really great thoughts to consider below (plus a…
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5 Top Tips for successful Virtual Selling
Building rapport, reading the ‘Zoom’ room and cutting through noise. Some of the most difficult tasks you face when selling virtually. Believe me when I say that you are far from alone in struggles to develop meaningful relationships and rapport within the nuances of a virtual world. I’ve put together this short article which I…
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Am I Alone? How has Covid-19 Affected Other Agencies?
Navigating a business through the 2020 horror story has (and continues to be) a tough and often companionless task for agency leaders. The stats below (which we have kindly been allowed to share with you all) from Andreas at Greenlight Digital, were taken from a poll of Andreas’s digital agency owners and were shared just…
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Watch: Landlords & Leases – What You Need to Know
My discussion with Karron Whitter of Clark Holt (recorded in September) couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time. As businesses struggle to decide what they need from their office space, the videos below cover everything you need to consider before entering a dialogue with your landlord. You can watch it in full, or skip to…
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Zebras. Redefining the Success of Startups
‘The message for legacy companies is clear: You must self-disrupt or gobble up your disruptors, or else face obsolescence at the hands of nimble start ups with access to more capital than ever before.” – Entrepreneur The subsequent message to startups? If you want our cash, consider profit and growth, consider it above everything else…
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Book Review: Who Moved my Cheese by Dr Spencer Johnson
Why read this book? If ever there was a time to consider your relationship with change, it would be now. A slightly clumsy set up doesn’t detract from the very powerful parable at the centre of this short book. If you embrace the story, you’ll take the opportunity to explore any fears you might have…
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Giving ideas, legs. Plus an inspiring ‘daylight directive’ leadership example
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking”. I’d tend to agree. My newsletter, Rambling On, is as much about my love for walking as it is my penchant for a chat, so it felt only right to throw some light on the incredible benefits of walking (whilst talking) and…
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Face it, your business is not that unique
It’s a fact that most agencies spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to find a truly ‘U’ USP and the reality is that you aren’t unique. If you can accept that, you may be starting the journey towards enlightenment – and ultimately towards becoming more valuable to your clients and as a business. I…
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Profit is not a dirty word – how agencies price
I listened to a recent webinar with Peter Czapp, co-founder of The Wow Company, twice. First with the usual open interest I have when exploring topics I know will be useful to my own clients, and then with much frantic scribbling and space bar bashing (pause, play, pause, play) in order to take as many…
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3 Ideas to Encouraging Collaboration and Tackle Isolation within Remote Teams
As the pandemic marches on, managers need to help their remote employees battle feelings of isolation. Not only that, the transition from instant to asynchronous communication (where you don’t expect an immediate response) is a huge hurdle for a lot of teams going remote – especially for those who have been used to working in…
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None-formulaic agency culture, Hard baked, not half baked.
This post came about through a recent discussion with a CEO client of mine who was having difficulty with his client services team. His reflections were that he wanted them to connect with clients on more than just the day-to-day work basis. He, quite rightly, wanted to build a closer, more personable relationship between his…
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Be more Seb. What a dancing toll booth operator can teach you about value
This little gem of a video was brought to my attention by Cameron Colquhoun, Chief Executive at Neon Century Intelligence. If you can get past the less than 4k video quality (who knew we’d come so far since 2011?) Then this video still has a wonderful moral to it. In short, be more Seb in whatever you…
