This morning I was reading an article as to how small & medium sized bakers where lamenting the drop in their sales revenue from maltese bread. The article had all the hallmarks of the usual issues that plague certain family businesses. It could be that the supply chain issues and the Ukrainian war leading to …
The Fall of Discretionary Spending
Netflix is just a case in point. Netflix last month revealed that it had lost customers for the first time in a decade. At first analysts believed that this was so, since clients had turned off their Netflix subscriptions for cheaper platforms. This was not the case. Further analysis revealed that in the two weeks …
Managing People in a tight labour market
Managing People was always a challenging task. However many businesses are finding that the challenge to manage people in such a tight labour market has become so difficult that they feel at a loss at how to balance a level of discipline and control whilst retaining the best human resource talent with the company. Many …
Dealing with Inflation
All pointers indicate that we are heading for a prolonged period of inflation. All reports point at supply side issues and an increase in demand for goods that is triggering such an inflation. Notwithstanding the fact that supply side disruptions are likely to be the main cause for this inflation, it is likely that the …
Tightening Labour Market
Saying that employing new employees and retaining present ones has become a nightmare, is putting it mildly. Any business owner or leader has today the lack of human resources at the top of his or her agenda and is likely spending a considerable amount of time on a daily basis to patch around this problem. …
Let it GO
I just came out from 3 lovely days with my 6 year old daughter at Disneyland in Paris. My daughter is a super aficionado of Disney's FROZEN animation and so the signature tune "Let it GO" was well drummed in my head whilst in Paris. However, as I listened to this tune over and over …
Leading & Managing Change
As the turbulent period the world is going through, seems to know no end, being agile and implementing change needs to be high on the agenda of every business leader. Yet I still see many family businesses and business leaders who still fail to understand the importance of all this. As we all know, change …
Pricing Strategy
As we today have to face an ever evolving inflationary period, the focus on pricing strategy needs to sharpen. Business leaders need to base prices on true, current costs and each customer’s true, current profitability. Traditional across-the-board price increases, which treat all costs and customers the same, are likely to have a single result - …
Economics for Business Leaders
One of the most critical skills for any Business Leader is knowing how an economy works and then using that knowledge for decision making. The skills that macroeconomic and macroeconomic concepts bring to business strategy and management practices should be foundational skills present in every business leader. Why? The world is a complex place. So …
Fasten your Seat Belt
Politicians may be giving you the impression that there is something like a free lunch. The reality is that the success or otherwise of your business will depend on the ability of your business to quickly adapt to the many changes the future (near future) will bring with it. As we have seen during the …
A Business Blog for SMEs & Family Businesses 