A 'Toolkit' for Creative Businesses and Organisations
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In line with my ethos of empowering creative people and to give examples of just some of the tools and techniques I can bring to consultancy and training assignments, I offer here a selection of management concepts, ideas, models and tools that I have used effectively with clients, often adapting them to suit special circumstances and challenges in the commercial, governmental or third sector.
To find which tools are most useful to deal with the challenges facing you at any particular time, see the Questions section.
These pages are not meant to provide comprehensive coverage of each subject, merely a brief introduction to provoke thought and lead to a more in depth understanding and application of the topic, either through further reading - or from me as your management consultant, executive trainer or personal coach. These ideas and tools are used in my training courses, workshops, seminars and lectures.
NB: This section, and all the pages within it, are under constant development. Contact me if you would like more ideas and tools to be added here.
Business Strategy and Business Planning
- Strategy in five simple steps
- Understanding the Business Environment using the ICEDRIPSTM Checklist
- Devising Business Strategy based on Core Competencies
- Mastering Change: using Empowerment and Innovation for Profit and Growth
- Identifying what you can be world-class at with The Hedgehog Concept
- Creating 'Interprises' - how to make successful collaborations between enterprises.
- Matching internal strengths to external opportunities with SWOT Analysis
- Understanding your Strengths and Weaknesses using Internal Analysis (Internal Audit)
- Strengths and Weaknesses analysis for Creative Businesses using PRIMEFACT Checklist
- Distinguishing the 'important few' with The Pareto Principle (80:20 rule)
- Analysing the Business Environment with PEST Analysis
- Aligning the whole organisation to customers' needs with Strategic Marketing
- Charting your Competitive Strategy by analysing competitors
- The Ten Stages of Change Management
- MAPSCARE Analysis: a checklist for understanding your strengths and weaknesses
- The SOSTAC ® Planning Framework for a structured approach to strategic planning
- External Audit using the ICEDRIPSTM Checklist
- Serve 'internal customers' to achieve perfect delivery using Total Quality Management
- Managing your portfolio using The 'Boston Box' (BCG Growth-Share Matrix)
- Fitting together Mission, Competencies and Environment with a 'Theory of the Business'
- Strategy by Saying No
- Using SMART Objectives for successful strategy implementation
- Involve employees in business planning using the Japanese technique of 'Ringi'
- Routes to growth using Ansoff's Matrix (Ansoff Matrix)
- Clarifying direction with Vision and Mission Statements
- Accounting for the non-financial performance of an organisation through a Social Audit
- PEST Analysis for understanding the business environment
- Measuring all the right things with The Balanced Scorecard
- Setting up a business that doesn't depend on your direct involvement. The E-Myth or Entrepreneurial Myth
- Practical Quality Assurance System for Small Organisations: PQASSO
- Taking into account all dimensions of Competition with Porter's Five Forces Model
- Avoid the bloody red ocean of competition and invent a new industry: Blue Ocean Strategy.
- Partnerships with stakeholders as part of a company's Corporate Social Responsibility.
- Measuring not only profit but also social and environmental impact using the 'Triple Bottom Line'.
Marketing and International Marketing
- Aligning the whole organisation to customers' needs with Strategic Marketing
- Doing business with the Chinese: The Art of Chinese Business
- Focusing on Competitors with Marketing Warfare
- Using the Internet strategically with a Website Strategy
- International Joint Ventures using Co-opetition
- The ICEDRIPSTM Checklist to analyse the Marketing Environment
- Delight the Customer with Total Quality Management
Competition and Competitive Strategy
- Anticipating competition from all directions using Porter's Five Forces Model
- Focus on competitors as well as customers using the concepts of Marketing Warfare
- 'Know your enemy' and Chart your Competitive Strategy
- Environmental Analysis or External Audit as your 'radar' for competitive threats
- Co-opetition: sometimes competitors can be co-operators!
- Avoid the bloody red ocean of competition and invent a new industry: Blue Ocean Strategy.
Organisational Culture and Human Resources
- The Ten Stages of Change Management
- How to lead and Manage Virtual Teams
- Communicate effectively using Cultural Intelligence
- Don't let the urgent over-rule the important by using The Four Quadrants
- Action Learning to learn from your own and others' experience
- Build a balanced team with Belbin's Team Roles
- Total Quality Management
- Assess your organisation's non-financial impact with a Social Audit
- Be able to identify Four Organisational Cultures
- Involve employees in setting and achieving SMART Objectives
- Make decisions by consensus using the Japanese technique of 'Ringi'
- Use The Six Thinking Hats for effective teamwork
- Know yourself: Internal Analysis (Internal Audit)
- Nine personality types of The Enneagram
- Do the important, even if it's not urgent: Quadrant II
- Develop a The Learning Organisation
Change Management
- Rosabeth Moss Kanter's advice on Mastering Change
- The ADKAR model of change management
- The Ten Stage Change Management Process
Leadership
- Inspirational Leadership from Visionary Leaders
- Lateral-thinking Leadership uses best practice from other industries and sectors.
- Six Leadership Styles: using the right style at the right time
- Leading Virtual Teams and managing people you rarely meet face to face
- Level 5 Leadership is not for the egotistical
- 'Just Enough' Leadership is enough
- Lead, don't Manage, and certainly don't micromanage
- Emotional Intelligence for Leaders
Organisational Structures
- Build an invisible or Virtual Organisation
- A new composite model of organisation structure: The Club/Sandwich
- The Flexible Firm or Shamrock Organisation
- Network Organisations
- How to Lead Virtual Teams
- There's more to communication than technology: Principles of Virtual Communication
- Setting up a business that doesn't depend on your direct involvement. The E-Myth or Entrepreneurial Myth
- The new 'Community Interest Company' format designed specifically for Social Enterprises.
"Most ideas on management have been around for a very long time, and the skill of the manager consists in knowing them all and,
rather as he might choose the appropriate golf club for a specific situation, choosing the particular ideas which are most
appropriate for the position and time in which he finds himself."
- Sir John Harvey-Jones