Do you treat all customers the same?   You shouldn’t.  And here’s why.   You’ve possibly heard of the 80:20 rule – sometimes known as the Pareto principle.  The principle tells us that a minority of causes – roughly 20% – are responsible for a majority of the effects – roughly 80%.  Now the [...]

  If you were choosing whether to increase your employees’ satisfaction or their engagement – which would you choose?   Or would you even consider there to be any difference between the two?   Perhaps you’re like some of the employers whom I’ve been talking to recently about this.  They use the two terms interchangeably [...]

To the aliens we’re aliens

I was chatting with my son Aidan.  He’s 6 – and thankfully still full of curiosity.   He asked me “Daddy do you think there are aliens?”   “Yep”   “Why?”   “Because there’s a gazillion stars like our sun and at least one of them has to have a planet going around it with [...]

Asking for advice and then ignoring it

Today my son happened to be with me when the post arrived.  One of the pieces was a monthly bulletin I get on marketing – from someone who refers to himself as the Evil Bald Genius.   The envelope itself was a good example of direct marketing – it had a real stamp, it used [...]

On July 4th, Independence Day in the world’s oldest republican democracy, it’s appropriate perhaps to have an American theme to the blog.   So – one of my favourite iPhone apps is NPR – America’s National Public Radio. And today I was listening to an NPR story discussing whether Hispanics can ever become supporters in [...]

Trust allows us to overcome hiccups

Recently I was doing some weeding in my mother’s garden – a garden where my brother-in-law is working on turning some of his fingers green.   Well it transpires I actually wasn’t weeding.  I found this out when my brother-in-law came running over to me telling me in extremely colourful language to leave his carrots [...]

Ever issue a conditional apology?

When you make a mistake do you try and hide it?  Or maybe jump through hoops in an effort to explain?  Or perhaps offer a conditional apology?   Conditional apologies drive me nuts.   A recent example occurred last week when the Irish Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter, was speaking in the Dáil.  (The Dáil [...]

Why are the pigeons fat?

On Monday I was in Dublin for meetings with existing and prospective customers.  When the work was finished I took a few minutes to enjoy the sunshine on a park bench in the wonderful St. Stephen’s Green.   I found myself looking at the pigeons.  And they were ALL fat.  (Excuse the poor resolution of [...]

If lots of people are irritated…

One of LinkedIn’s changes over the past year has been the introduction of endorsements.  If you’ve encountered pop-up suggestions of whom you could endorse and for what, then you’ll know what I mean.  And you’ll also know how easy it is to give these endorsements.   Opinions differ on this – but I do know [...]

Self Praise Is No Praise

My sons were sick yesterday so I took some time off to spend with them. They improved as the day wore on and we ended up outside playing football.   I was in goals and Aidan (6) took a shot which I managed to save. “Great save” I exclaimed. “Self praise is no praise” was [...]

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