No One Eats Just Cake – Have Your Cake On Top
Do Not Only Eat Cake It’s absolutely fine to put high-value, time-based, consulting work on top of your standard products. That suits bespoke and complex problems and allows you and your team to do your best and most rewarding work. It’s this complex problem solving that people like us love doing. Creative people genuinely love […]
Which Income Stream Is Making You Money?
We often recommend better management reporting, but also, the equally important, regular time put aside each month to review and interpret the results. This might seem like someone that’s good with a hammer thinking every problem is a nail, but we have been around long enough to see good reporting as a major contributor to […]
Is Your Business Lumpy? Is It Going Downhill?
Is your business really lumpy? Or is it just the accounts? And if so, is it, beneath all that distortion, having problems? How do you find out? Most businesses are much less lumpy than the monthly accounts usually show. That’s because most businesses only have an accurate set of accounts once a year, and even […]
Beware The Budget Loch Ness Monster
In last week’s blog entry I talked about how what might appear to be a lumpy business is more often just lumpy accounts and how dangerous that can be. It’s a profit one month, a loss the next, but you have been there before right? Managers tell you “$400K is coming in next month” but […]
Who’s Who In Your Business Zoo?
Most people only have a limited number of different tasks to perform each day. If they are delivering work for clients, their days look fairly similar week to week. But there are hundreds of separate tasks that need to be done in an accounts department. Most of them repeating daily, weekly, monthly or annually. Ask […]
Do You Know Where The Day Goes?
Time flies – but it can also sink you. So how do you better control it? Usually only people that bill by the hour use time sheets. I think a lot of other businesses should as well. When most people think of timesheets they think of the 6-minute interval hell stories we all have […]
Strategy Vs Housekeeping
Some things have to get done – else they will come back to bite you later – but they won’t necessarily grow a business. As an example, accounts departments are usually seen as a cost, and rightly so because most of the tasks they undertake are housekeeping functions. Chasing the debtors, doing payroll, and adding […]
How To Write A Budget Paper
If you have to present a budget paper to your Board and/or investors it’s a good idea to provide a document explaining the numbers, rather than just hit them cold with a big complex spreadsheet. It’s not just a better way to communicate with stakeholders but also a great way for you to clarify your […]
Design The Life You Love
Check out “Design The Life You Love” by Ayse Birsel. This is a great read for business owners. Especially the consideration of constraints as well as deconstruction and reconstruction of elements. Enjoy http://www.aysebirsel.com/book/
Why It’s Better To Be Slightly Resource Constrained
Human beings work better with constraints and we are usually not very good at restraint. Constraints drive better creative solutions, plus we get a sense of achievement and satisfaction when we overcome them. Too many resources, on the other hand, usually just ends up causing waste. Anyone that wants to stay healthy knows not to have […]