Having the opportunity of consulting and working within a number of industry sectors and various companies in many parts of the world, I am continually intrigued by the “motivation questions” that are so often asked – how can we motivate our staff well to achieve better productivity? How do we get our staff to take…
They know their customers. They know what their customers want. They know how to present their products so that their customers will purchase from them. They know the ideal pricing for their products so that they clear their goods daily. ‘Fresh’, ‘freshly cooked’ and ‘relevant’ are the maxims by which they operate. These are the…
There’s a wonderful sign on one of the lengthy dirt roads in South Africa which reads: “Choose your rut carefully as you will be in it for the next one hundred kilometres”! “Ruts” are not particular to gravel roads, however, but seem to be part of the regular human experience as people get stuck in…
Colin Hall, friend and former colleague, was born during the Second World War into a reasonably affluent white South African family. His schooling during those Apartheid years meant that he got the best education, but with it, also heavy doses of superiority and competition. He soon discovered that life was his for the grasping and…
Most leaders (and in fact, most people) have the inability to be honest with themselves about their inadequacies; brutally honest, with growth as their goal. This inability leads to self-deception and justification. The problem is always ‘out there’, not internal. The fault lies with others, their attitude, their laziness, their incompetence. These leaders never seem…
“I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him” (Booker T Washington) Revenge is the predominate choice of response in our world today. We see this in the multitude of wars and discrepancies all over the planet. It’s characterised in today’s litigious societies and even experienced in religious…
International sport is fascinating, especially to note the trends, changes in approach, and changes to the rules of whichever game is being played, and the dominance of certain countries in the respective sport expressions that are national favourites. In soccer, Brazil, France, England, Italy, Germany, and Spain have all had their moments. With cricket, Australia…
Over the past three decades, Free To Grow, a consulting company based in South Africa, has created rich, stimulating and meaningful learning experiences for well over 1 500 clients and has trained almost 150 000 people during this time. Through many years of experimentation and research in the field of adult learning, Free To Grow has developed…
I have travelled on but a few of the great and sometimes famous rivers of our world – the Zambezi (near the Victoria Falls) and the Orange Rivers in Africa, the Colorado and Mississippi in the USA and the Thames in the UK. I still need to get to the Amazon, Nile, Volga, Danube, Yangtze…
As a frequent traveller, visiting different countries, staying in many different hotels and eating in many different restaurants, I occasionally got spoilt with fine service or product offerings that “blew me away” and left me smiling: A warm wet towel upon arrival at a restaurant to mop brow and hands A pair of swans (made…
Businesses exist to get results, make profit and deliver value for shareholders. Anything less than this means a lack of fulfilment of the business dream, inadequate execution or a strategy that is not effectively aligned to the money-making model of the industry in which the company finds itself. In my exposure to many hundreds of…
The current world economic context is dismal, to say the least – financial analysts and the World Bank continue to predict slow growth, volatile markets and the possibility of ongoing disruptive wars and global climate disaster events. Governments are attempting to send the “right messages” internationally to continue attracting investment, and fiscal efficiencies, disciplined spending…
