Yearly Archives: author

I’ve been facilitating strategy away days for many years now. But I’ve also been a participant, as a director/manager within the various organizations in which I’ve worked. So I’ve been able to look at them from both sides of the fence. I’ve been interested in what people think about these events, so I recently decided

I recently typed this question, “Why are front line customer service people so confused?” into Google. In 0.43 seconds I received “about 250m results”. In fact, I couldn’t find any answers as to why customer service people are so confused. What I did find were many articles about confused customers – “Tell-tale signs your customer

An interesting article in Business Insider UK (May 2017) discussed the importance for new students of reading. It came up with ten key ways in which reading can help – see below. While I wouldn’t challenge the principle of reading being a key part of academic learning – I think the volume we now give

Time for business schools to practise what they teach? This article appeared in AMBITION, the magazine for MBAs and business schools.  For decades business schools could do no wrong …. Read more

Good customer service – what we should all be aiming for. Attracting and keeping our customers, ensuring they come back time and again. However, data, algorithms and perhaps marketing people who don’t quite understand how to use them are resulting in many good customers being turned off and turned away. Not because the product or

This is the third in a series of blogs based on my book – Excellence in Business School Teaching Insights and Recommendations for Faculty, Deans and Directors.I want to highlight how HE sellers understand markets, but HE deliverers largely do not – and this can have serious implications for student satisfaction and success. In many

I typically write about customer focus and service or university and business school education. In this blog, I’d like to change direction. Because, I recently took a group of my Edinburgh MBA students on a study visit to Iceland, to explore business, culture and its impact on the country’s success. I was impressed and inspired

On the 29th March I’ll be speaking at the Universities UK conference, Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning . It looks a good conference and I’ll be running a workshop entitled Teaching excellence – turning the challenge into a strategic advantage for universities. The workshop will follow up to my recently published book, Excellence

Until recently, quality of research has been a key contributor to university rankings. That is changing.  Teaching is about to take centre-stage – or at least become as important as research – and play a critical part for both league tables and funding. What is changing, what is the impact for universities, business schools and

These days everything appears to be ever more formulaic. Wherever we go as service consumers we are greeted (or confronted) by processes which are seemingly designed to delight us but in reality either annoy us or just leave us cold? When working with clients and students, I spend some time looking at service process analysis

In a recent blog – “How Strategy Really Works – My Three Cs” – I discussed my views about what makes good strategy. Understanding Customers, Beating Competitors and Being in Control. I thought that provided managers understood these three principles, the pathway to developing good strategies was clear. Understand the principles, develop your strategies around

As we move through January I thought I would think backwards rather than forwards, reflecting on one area of business that seems to have remained forever constant. The area? The relationship between sales and marketing – I can remember how difficult it was in the 1980s and 90s. In 2006, Philip Kotler, well known academic