Insights & Musings
Where to Start with Start-up Investments
Everyone talks about start-ups. They are either starting a start-up or looking to invest in one.So, where to start when it comes to start-ups?You can find a lot of advice about starting your own business but, perhaps not surprisingly, much less so when it comes to what start-up business to invest your money in.Let’s start at the beginning. What does any investor look for when looking to invest?
What Do CEOs Do Anyway?
I’m a CEO.Have been for a number of years. And so I started thinking about my “role”.Normally the CEO is one person in your organisation who does not have a job description. That’s because it is often – certainly in the world of entrepreneurs- the CEO who has invented the company, set it up, made it all happen. But, largely on account of that, the CEO will rarely have anything resembling a job description. They may never have even thought about what it is they do, while all the time designing jobs and job descriptions for the people they are hiring.
Work, Life And Balance
January is that time of year that reminds us all of that often repeated contemporary mantra: work-life balance.Those three words roll off the tongue and have rolled off the tongue for many an employee, boss or even, heaven forbid, an HR Executive.They have become the sort of benchmark to one’s life. If for any reason you don’t have it – that mythic balance – then somehow you are not a very good human being let alone employee.
Business Leaders and Historical Military Leaders - Really?
In recent years there has been a trend to use military metaphors when dealing with business. Even the straightforward and omnipresent expression “ to hit the ground running” is reminiscent of parachutes and invasions. Advertising agencies talk of “campaigns” which in turn reminds us of Napoleon trudging through the snows of Russia circa 1812.The extension of the military metaphor to the business world is, however, never more so than in the world of leadership training. In recent years the world of business has looked to the great men – and they were mostly men – who led the biggest and the brashest military campaigns in history. Think Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Attila the Hun, Napoleon, and even Winston Churchill. I say “even” because before the glory of the Second World War Churchill had proved a disastrous military tactician, just ask anyone who was on the beaches of Gallipoli.
A New Year With Our Friends Electric
New Year’s Day!Don’t you just love it?Well, I’m here in Scotland. And there is nowhere better to enjoy the end of one year and the start of another. They call it Hogmanay up here, which translates into English as a great excuse for a gigantic party. North of the Border it is not just New Year’s Day that is a public holiday but January 2 as well. Yes, it’s that good a party.
The Real Price of Cheap Television Sets
Ask anyone: we watch less television than once we did.Yes, we may watch more box sets but that’s not really television, not in the old fashioned sense. Once television ruled the roost. It took the place of radio in the family home. Sitting rooms were organized around the television set that sat central in any home arrangement. The viewing figures in countries like the United Kingdom were in the many millions for even some of the more mundane viewing.
How Not to Market a Brand
It’s election time in the United Kingdom.This is the third general election in four years – 2015, 2017, 2019. There have been European elections – 2014 & 2019. In addition, in 2016, there have been elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. Plus a plethora of local elections and the odd by-election. And during this period two divisive referenda: one on Scottish independence in 2014 and the other on the UK’s continued membership of the European Union in 2016.It almost seems like the UK enjoys voting! The fact is I have met no one who is looking forward to this election. This is in large part down to the at times lackluster and then at other times bitter campaigns fought by all the parties.
Tears for Uber? More like Fears
I write to you from London.I am writing this while sitting in an Uber.It may be the last for some time in this city.You see Uber has been stripped of its London licence. The local authorities found that over 14,000 Uber trips had been taken with drivers who had faked their identity on the firm’s app.
How to Handel Money - What is it with Musicians and Money?
Sometimes you come across the most bizarre and, therefore, the most intriguing pieces of research. Like in the case of George Frideric Handel, composer and all round master musician. But did you know he was also a canny investor?Ellen T. Harris is Professor Emeritus in Musicology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has written about Handel and the Bank of England.George Frideric Handel was born on 23 February 1685 in Halle, then part of Brandenburg-Prussia. Although German by birth he is now famous for his musical career in London where he lived from 1712 until his death in 1759. A Baroque composer, he wrote operas, oratorios, anthems, and organ concertos.
Recruiting and Retaining
We talk a lot about recruitment, and rightly so. In fact, there is a whole industry – and a profitable one – built upon the need of businesses around the globe to recruit the right staff to the right job at the right time.There are conferences where people are recruited, there are endless advertising platforms on line and elsewhere, and then there are the digital networks that showcase talent and also allow potential employers to take a look at whose available. It seems to work, people do find work and employers are less stressed about looking for workers these days on account of so much digital assistance.
Another new podcast series from Mount Bonnell
Good news!Mount Bonnell Media have just been commissioned for a new podcast series.That’s right another podcast series will be underway early next year, adding to the already existing roster of exciting and innovative media product currently being produced by Mount Bonnell across many different platforms.How to Succeed in Business Without Selling Your Soul is a podcast series exploring business ethics today in an entertaining, anecdotal and enlightening way. It is proposed as a Mt. Bonnell Media production in conjunction with the alumni network of the IESE Business School.
How Not to Build a Team
The words “team building” fill some with a great rush of enthusiasm.It is a moment when those you work with for so many hours each week, week after week, sometimes year after year, sit down together – or jump up together – and learn so much more about each other. The thing is though that sometimes the things you find out are much more than anyone present ever wanted to know – ever!
New Podcast: Factual America
A new podcast is bornYou may have remembered that a few weeks ago I mentioned Alamo Pictures?It is my new venture to bring some great US based documentaries to the widest audience possible. We’re talking feature length documentaries appearing at movie theatres and film festivals, on Netflix and television. This idea has grown out of some of the work we were doing at Mt. Bonnell Media. There we produced films and podcasts for clients. It was not just great fun also a testing ground for could be done.And, now, what could be done has been born with a name: Alamo Pictures.
All in the Mind or Why It Has Always Been Hard to Concentrate
This week I needed to write something. It is hard enough to do so but with the many and easily available distractions that assail us. At every turn, in recent decades things have got markedly worse than in the days before the digital era. But before you throw up your hands in despair I have some words of consolation: such a struggle was ever thus.Take a look at what is known as the Middle Ages. Now you cannot get a more different time to our own. No electricity, never mind internet, and, yet, it was during such seemingly quieter days that men and women of earlier times dealt with the same issues of concentration as we do today.