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Management

Common Traits of Successful Business Owners

What does it take to succeed in business? You might think the skills and traits required of the CEO of a multinational company are worlds away from those of a small business owner, but in fact successful business leaders have a lot in common, whatever the size of the company they lead. Essential skillsets that […]

The Coalition and Business Partnerships

There is an interesting thread on the IOD group on Linkedin on the Cameron-Clegg partnership. There are a lot of sceptics around, but also a few who think it could change the face of politics in the UK. From a business perspective partnerships can work very well, but they are also often the cause of […]

69. Leadership in recession for small business – John Adair’s Action-Centred Leadership

Leadership has become a major management topic in recent years, and there is a tendency to think naturally about large teams and big corporations. Having yesterday attended a workshop of the Leadership Academy at the Open University the subject of leadership and leading out of recession is top of the mind. Small businesses usually lead the […]

66. Leadership thinking for small business (part 1)

We have been looking at some of the motivational theories and how they apply to small business. In the area of leadership, the gurus come by the pile, with lots of theory and not much evidence. What it is critical for a small business to know is that leadership is not the same as management, […]

65. Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y for small business

McGregor published his book, The Human Side of Enterprise, back in 1960, and it has been influential ever since. He suggested 2 approaches to management. Theory X managers believe that employees do not like work and have to be managed with carrot and stick to get anything done; Theory Y managers believe that people get […]

35. Peter Drucker in his own words interpreted for small business 7

“What is measured improves”. Peter Drucker built this into a manegment system – Management by Objectives – but of course people have always set objectives. One early business example of using the principles of ‘what is measured improves’ is Alfred P Sloane at General Motors in the 1920s. He was an advocate of management by walking […]

19. Scientific Management for small business

From the previous article in this series you will hopefully have got an idea of what a small business might pick up from Frederick Winslow Taylor’s Scientific Management – an approach which is now a century old. This time I thought I would try to be a bit more prescriptive and just say what I think there […]

18. Small business help from beyond the grave

A spooky title – are we into seances? Well, no. But just because the business guru is no longer alive does not mean there are not a number of useful lessons for small business. For instance let’s go back a long way – Frederick Winslow Taylor died in 1917; he was born in 1856. His major […]

14. Gladwell’s Tipping Point meets Anderson’s Long Tail for small business

Chris Anderson’s ‘Long Tail’ concept works with Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Tipping Point’ to create results beyond expectation. Down in the Long Tail the niche opportunities exist, and every so often a success emerges – I have mentioned before Heather Gorringe’s WigglyWigglers.co.uk for instance. And here is where the Tipping Point concept comes in. From a remote rural worm-farming business […]

1. The Apprentice Hullaballoo

This blog was written after the end of a series of the TV show: The Apprentice, and it started me thinking about the relevance of large business experience to small business, and started a series of blogs that provide a round-up of classic business thinking but applied to small business. So everyone has had their say on […]

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