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Posted on June 5, 2012 10 Comments
I was lucky enough to be a special guest of the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital Charity at yesterday’s Great Manchester Cycle Ride in recognition for the Charity Bike Ride I did last year, and as their reigning Many Hands Award Winner. The ride was made up of 4 laps of a 13 mile circuit around the […]
Posted on May 18, 2012 5 Comments
This was Prime Minister David Cameron’s message to business and workers earlier this week. Does he have a point? The opposition jumped on the missive immediately. Arguably the biggest whiner of the House of Commons, Chuka Umunna spoke of little else for the following few days. Perhaps the mantra could be adopted on the opposition benches […]
Posted on May 16, 2012 24 Comments
We’ve currently got four FTSE C-Level searches live; three FTSE-100, one FTSE-250; two CFOs, two CEOs. It’s a great coup, but the stories behind them are also very telling of the market. Last year we saw what was branded as ‘Arab Spring’; the uprising in several ‘Arab’ nations, entire populations typically fighting against tyrant leaders, leading […]
Posted on April 27, 2012 13 Comments
I was privileged enough to be a Question Time panel member at yesterday’s inaugural Talk of Manchester event. Great event harnessing just about everything that is great about Manchester….and the North West. The event opened with the perennially incredible, motivational and energetic Michael Finnegan, CEO of i2i – the Peter Kay of business speaking. Michael […]
Posted on March 8, 2012 8 Comments
It’s my wedding anniversary today; four years, no time at all in the halls of marriage….. but in career terms, four years is now a well above average tenure. What happened to the ‘job for life’? Times move on, businesses move on and careers have certainly moved on. The average (median) tenure for people’s current jobs […]
Posted on March 7, 2012 Leave a Comment
We appear to be obsessed with growth. It’s the subject of just about every board meeting and strategic discussion. It is also often topic number one in the ‘broadsheets’ and even in the tabloids. Will the economy grow by 2% this year? Or will we face disaster and barely make 1%? But what is growth? […]
Posted on March 5, 2012 1 Comment
Style over substance. “Image is everything”. We spend £1,000s on clothes, skin care, hair products every year (and women can be even worse) all in the quest of improving our image. Dozens of entire industries have been born out of humans desire to maximise how others see and perceive us – irrespective of what the […]
Posted on February 27, 2012 7 Comments
For weeks on end, for almost 10 years, millions of TV viewers have watched Simon Cowell publicly berate dozens and dozens of people, all with a quest to exploit their talent in the name of success. Many people proudly stride onto the X-Factor stage, convinced their talent is world class only to be ripped to shreds and tossed on […]
Posted on January 30, 2012 8 Comments
It used to be that the hunting season began in August, on the ‘glorious 12th’, with Grouse, before moving onto Partridge and Pheasant. Nowadays, however, it begins several months earlier with Bankers bonuses. A hugely political hotbed, fuelled by politicians (who have demonstrated absolutely no moral compass when it comes to remuneration/expenses) and tabloid media […]
Posted on January 27, 2012 1 Comment
I turn 40 today. I would be lying if I dismissed it as ‘just a number’. It has been a milestone that has been on my mind for some time, but a source of positive reflection rather than mortal dread. Mostly. I vividly remember my father’s 40th birthday. I was 11 yrs old and 40 seemed […]
Posted on January 22, 2012 7 Comments
Over the last few days we’ve had a number of people bleating about the lack of Salfordians getting jobs at the BBC’s new ‘Manchester’ base…..in Salford. The MEN, The Guardian, Hazel Blears MP (spot a trend?) have all thrown their moans in, after only 24 successful applicants out of over 3,000 applicants came from Salford, and only […]
Posted on January 18, 2012 13 Comments
This morning, at North-West Business Insider’s latest economic forum, one of the two ‘Dons’ of Manchester, the great Sir Richard Leese, was joined by Mike Emmerich; CEO of New Economy, Rachel Combie; Director of Strategic Marketing at Marketing Manchester along with event host, presenter and eloquent narrator – the eternally youthful Michael Taylor; Outgoing Editor […]
Posted on January 10, 2012 3 Comments
It’s a good day to run a business in the North. Of all the businesses announcing figures in the last two days, the Northern businesses have cleared the table. Bentley: Record sales announced. Pets at Home: New stores announced. Morrisons: Increased sales. Booths Supermarkets: 3% rise like-for-like. JD Sports: Increased sales, now announced acquisition of […]
Posted on December 29, 2011 8 Comments
“Success is the result of good judgment, good judgment is the result of experience; Experience is often the result of bad judgment.” — Tony Robbins We all have moments of bad judgement. We all make mistakes. My mistake was allowing a set of negative circumstances to affect behaviour and judgement. Mistakes are part of being […]
Posted on November 20, 2011 1 Comment
Recent survey of the countries leading businesses gave interesting results. A number of unsurprising trends emerged from the survey: NEDs: UP Women: DOWN CEO NEDs: DOWN Directors: DOWN Risk Committees: UP It is no surprise that the number of risk committees has doubled in the past two years, and that the increase has taken place […]
Posted on November 13, 2011 5 Comments
“Whilst I don’t technically have the experience you requested, I feel my Transferable Skills enable me to fulfil the role”. All of a sudden every other job applicant appears to have Transferable Skills. So transferable and relevant, that they feel the need to highlight them……and then explain what they are……and then explain why they are […]
Posted on November 10, 2011 1 Comment
Same old statistics/same old complaints? Another report citing that the proportion of total income earned by the top 1% of earners in the UK has grown from 6% to 14% in the last 30 years. (8% to 18% in the US in the same period). Yet….. An OECD study in 2010 showed that Real Income […]
Posted on October 20, 2011 Leave a Comment
Be the best you can be. Once upon a time, we were all encouraged to work hard, to excel, to maximise our natural talent (nature or nurture), race to win, go the extra mile. The brightest students in school were put in the top class/set so they could maximise their potential. Meritocracy was part of […]
Posted on October 12, 2011 1 Comment
In a session with a business mentor last week, he posed an interesting question: What is Success? It got us all thinking. Success appears to be an increasingly unused term, and the celebration of it ever rarer. A by-product of the current macro-economic environment? It certainly shouldn’t be. Success is no more difficult to attain in tougher […]
Posted on September 30, 2011 Leave a Comment
Growth slowed: The pace of US, UK and German growth slowed sharply in the quarter. Gloomier outlook: OECD significantly revised down its forecasts for the global economy. ONS downgraded UK Q2 growth to 0.1% Emerging markets cooled: India’s GDP grew at the slowest pace in more than a year, China’s equity market underperformed the US […]
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