Several years ago, on a flight from London to Melbourne, I sat next to a soft-spoken Scotsman from Aberdeen, who was then CEO of a business unit of Siemens. Long haul business travellers usually seek solitude. but on this occasion we engaged in what was the beginning of a friendship. The humility and enthusiasm of this generous high achiever [Continue]
North Korea is keeping the heat up around Asia, Myanmar is clarifying it's diplomatic standing upon Aung San Suu Kyi. And maybe we can have a chance to meet Iran's first lady after the June election What these events share in common is the question "Who's going be the leader?" For interest, I wondered what similarities these [Continue]
As large companies continue to consolidate and look at ways to rationalize they inevitably focus to cut out the middle man. The falling out of Singapore International Airlines with one of their major agents, Flight Centre in Australia, tells the story of this type of change. [Continue]
As social networking in business rapidly continues defining itself we may see many large and small players circumvented if they ignore it. One thing I notice with many business peers, including CEO’s and business leaders alike, is they generally focus on what they understand well. Social networks” as a relatively new phenomena is generally [Continue]
Those who have come into management jobs in the last 18 years of growth and affluence now have challenges. Companies are now very lean and highly intent on remaining viable as they look to position for upturn when it comes. The skills for pulling all this all together are in short supply. I am not sure if the so called XY Gen awakening is so [Continue]
How can we take holidays in the middle of recession. Just do it, I say and why not if you can get away with it? It is is a great thing but you sure come back to earth when you find it all there waiting for you. But I am back now and here is a quick round up the last month and some stuff on whats' to come. My Quote for this month There is [Continue]
This week, I had a meeting with a client to review the requirements for a BI project. Turns out that most of the points we asked were responded with "please put it as an option in the proposal". What this tells is that the client doesn't know what they want at all. [Continue]
"Our economic future is increasingly underwritten by the rise of Asia.." It is interesting in Asia where lifestyles are good, the flow on economic slowdown has been less severe. Something must be different? [Continue]
Do things really change or is it the way we see it? To those who knew how things were in 1957 it may have seemed that the life was simple but it was not always easy. But considering it now maybe then it was a much better deal. I wonder if it is possible to get that back and still keep the best of both worlds. Should we try to [Continue]
As Obama administration passes his 100th day office in the white house, poll reviles that his office’s popularity is still up there. Following shortly, outbreak of the deadly A(H1N1) hits the front page of every newspaper and talks. I slowly realize that all of this is related to “change”.As US President Obama passes his 100th day office in [Continue]
This story has been around a while but always worth recanting. Bruce Sansome, Chairman of Natex Engineering Group in Australian shared this with a TEC Group in Melbourne recently As a lightheaded refocus he prefaced saying "When things in your lives seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the [Continue]