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The Gurus

29. Peter Drucker in his own words interpreted for small business 1

“The purpose of business is to create a customer”. It sounds slightly strange, but I think it gets to the heart of the matter. Firstly it puts the focus firmly on the most important person in the business, the customer. How do you ‘create’ a customer – don’t they already exist? Well, no. At the […]

28. Implementing Drucker’s Management by Objectives

Setting objectives is a useful start to getting your business focused and firing on all cylinders; if you employ people, it will help their focus to be aligned with yours, and if you do not, it will help you avoid getting distracted from where you want to get to. But it’s impact will be severely […]

27. Peter Drucker and Objectives for Small Business

Peter Drucker introduced the concept of Management by Objectives, which certainly from the 70’s onwards became universal in major companies. It is the concept that management is about balancing needs and goals with resources and setting relevant, measurable and achievable objectives. It has influenced generations of business managers, so much so that in larger businesses at least it […]

26. Peter Drucker key concepts for small business

In his 1954 book, The Practice of Management Drucker looked at management in a human environment rather than a mechanistic one as Frederick Winslow Taylor had a generation or so before. He posed three key questions which have become the standard building blocks for much strategic and marketing thinking since: What is our business? Who […]

25. Peter Drucker – the gurus’ guru – but what about small business?

Peter Drucker is probably the most influential business guru of all time. Born in 1909, died in 2005, he published his first book, The Concept of the Corporation, in 1946 and his last, The Effective Executive in Action, in 2005 at the age of 95! He more or less created the concept of business management: before […]

25. Dale Carnegie – tipster or visionary for your small business?

You can read Dale Carnegie and pick up some useful pointers – you can use them like a series of useful tricks of the trade, such as the appeal to noble motives, or the early question to which they must answer ‘yes’. Indeed, the telesales industry has recognised the efficacy of one of Carnegie’s precepts: […]

24. Small businesses: getting them to change their mind without giving offence

Dale Carnegie has nine ways to achieve this, and as usual, they are simple and straightforward: but we still do not always follow this path: 1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation. The objective is to get them to work with you rather than against you, so start with what you agree with, or what you […]

23. Dale Carnegie on Winning People to Your Way of Thinking

Dale Carnegie comes up with 12 ways of winning people to your point of view – again, nothing that should not be obvious, but how often do we hear people not following these guidelines, and how often do we not follow them ourselves? Point 1: Avoid arguments – you are hardly ever going to win […]

22. Making Dale Carnegie’s precepts work for small business

Dale Carnegie’s six simple principles to make people like you: 1. be genuinely interested in them. 2. Smile! 3. Remember their names. 4. Listen well. 5. Reflect their interests. and 6. Make them feel important and do it sincerely. Simple but not easy. Most entrepreneurs are strong personalities, usually quite self confident and self-centred, and in a […]

21. Blindingly obvious advice for small business

When you write down Dale Carnegie’s advice in simple summary without the detail in the text it all sounds blindingly obvious. But then that’s true of much more academic business books too. The fact is that most things that are going to make most difference to most businesses are common sense and straightforward – just […]

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