Across the pond

When bad things happen to good leaders

You’ve done all the right things. You’ve provided crystal clear direction to your organisation, rewarded courageous risk-taking, encouraged innovation, honored diversity, demanded personal accountability, put the customer first…but it all just went to hell in a hand basket. Your market just went south, a major product failed or your biggest customer went under. Your numbers are in the tank, your best people are leaving and you no longer know whom to trust on your management team.

• Supernanny offers lessons in business turnaround/performance management
• Her simple formula is observation/feedback/coach followed by recognition/reward/discipline
• Rather than leaping in with solutions, spend a day or more observing
• Supernanny is not afraid of having uncomfortable but courageous conversations
• Are your rewards relevant and meaningful for the individuals?

What can a reality TV personality tell us about leadership? Owen Smith argues that Supernanny could teach entrepreneurs a thing or two.

The 10 strategy tenets for developing a customer-driven workforce

Turning a customer service strategy into reality is a key challenge for organisations. Today, most senior managers realise that customer service is the competitive strategic weapon but achieving this is sometimes a major challenge. Organisations are their people, and developing a customer-driven workforce has to be the key role of customer service leaders and managers… so how can they do this?

• There's no point getting more sales if you aren't making money on the additional sales
• Fix the under-performing staff, suppliers, customers and products, or sack them
• Compete on everything but price so put your prices up!

Being nice isn't enough in business; especially in recessionary times. So, says Robert Craven, it's time to get tough.

It seems that my 'Beating The Credit Crunch' ology is like marmite. People love it or hate it.

The EU and UK government have had an attack of commonsense. They’ve decided to flog off parts of Lloyds, RboS and Northern Rock to create new banks and both are said to be determined to see more competition in the market.