Nicholas Bate

Build A Better Business 7

95% anxious attention on the competition: NO!

Yes: 20% attention on the competition; 20% on our strategies to delight our clients; 20% ensuring our people are world class: 20% improving every damn system in the business; 20% product innovation.

Jagged Thoughts For Jagged Times 8

Go home. Rest. You can't do anything with deep fatigue.

January 2013, Redux 21

1. Your Greatest Allies and Enemies
2. Necessarily Seven
3. Stay observant
4. Build A Better Business
5. It's all FREE
6. HAVE to do it?
7. Choices 7
8. but who put the sign up?
9. What The Emperor's New Clothes teaches us.
10. Back in stock: How To Be Brilliant
11. 10 second St Paul's and The Bus to Clapham
12. LifeTips101: first ten
13. LifeTips101: second ten
14. LifeTips101: third ten
15. Wake Up, Get Real, Take Action...
16. Instant Business Speak: the dictionary...
17. Jagged Thoughts for Jagged Times
18. Rain & Rain.
19. Bounce: not just for balls.
20. The Silo.
21. Zen & The Art of Cubicle Freedom

Bonus: the essential posts of 2012

Life Tips 101: the third ten

1. Creativity isn't a technique: it's a way of being.
2. Selling is generating quantity of possibilities, to which you then add an amazing quality of pitch.
3. They don't know. But their idea might take you to the solution. Listen to understand.
4. What's measurable is often so much less important than what is not measurable. It's a length, a sum, a weight which gives us confidence. It's false confidence.
   
5. Time only speeds up when you get older because of sameness. Build more variety and you'll have that delightful childhood speed again.
6. David Bowie showed putting the work in and delivering great product may even mean you don't need social media.
7. Ensure significant amounts of your day is investing. In your learning or health or relationships or...It'll make future days easier.
8. Remind yourself you need a damn good reason to get into debt.And nice shoes isn't it.
9. Talking beats e-mail. And sometimes hugging beats talking.
10. Any conversation can be re-started. It ain't about pride. It's about humility.

TBC

First ten

Second ten

Children Portraits

with Chase Jarvis.

Catrina

launches her Cat & Mouse site.

Jagged Thoughts For Jagged Times 7

One notebook. One Pen. One Action. At a time.

Build A Better Business: Executive Summary, so far

1. Do the maintenance: clear the gutters of leaves.
2. Test the interactions with the business: be a secret shopper.
3. Dig deeper: don't make decisions solely on the summary PPT.
4. Stay special: don't allow the chase for business to weaken the story that gets you the best business.
5. Less, less, less. Vital few not trivial many
6. Forget mission, vision, values, goals etc for a while. What's your story?

David Seah

goes for a Japanese day planner.

What Business Can Learn From A Child's Bedtime Story: 2: The Three Bears

In Goldilocks and The Three Bears there are an awful lot of 'three's: bears, chairs, bowls of porridge and repetitive actions. Three is a handy number for getting a message across: in a keynote, in a training, in a pitch: tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them.

Here for The Emperor's New Clothes