Management Today articles from August 2007

Management Today archives from August 2007

The Ad Industry: All Shook up.
August 1, 2007... When I left university in the mid-80s, many of my smartest contemporaries went into advertising. This was pre-Big Bang, so the City was still a bit stiff and blue-blooded. The most dissolute bloke in my year (he collected a 'Douglas' = Hurd = a...

Contributors.
August 1, 2007... ROGER PARRY - As non-executive chairman of online market research firm YouGov, Parry knows about people power and the internet. For anyone baffled by cookies, wikis and the casting of pods, his review of Wikinomics: How mass collaboration...

Chartered Management Institute: In My Opinion.
August 1, 2007... Business leaders need experience of working abroad to develop an international mindset, argues Chartered Management Institute Companion Patrick Macdonald. Businesses are steadily becoming more global. As a result, it's more important than...

The MT Diary.(Land Rover)
August 1, 2007... Me and my inner Mongolian; Rover resurrected in Beijing; red, white and blue tape. When you think of Mongolia, if you think anything at all, I guess it's Ulan Bator and Genghis Khan - and possibly those tacky barbecue joints that were all...

Ten ways to... get through August.(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... 1. Tackle that admin pile 2. Clean out your inbox 3. Plan for the months ahead 4. Freshen up your contacts list 5. Learn a new program 6. Update your website 7. Catch up with clients 8. Go on a course, if you can find one 9....

It'll never fly - Tetra Pak.(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Beyond cracking open a lobster claw and pulling out the succulent flesh, opening a Tetra Pak gable-topped milk carton is one of the more challenging culinary tasks. The tug and rip of soggy cardboard - and resulting milky chin - will be...

Dave's Eco-nomics: think about your ink.(pens)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... GREEN ALERT You know the routine: you arrive at your desk and can't find a pen, so promptly head to the stationery cupboard for a shiny new black ballpoint. By the end of the day you've somehow ended up with one of those mysterious...

Earning Curve: Cartoons.(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Disney, sales of licensed merchandise ('06) - pounds 13bn Fox, gross income from The Simpsons - pounds 3bn Charles Schultz, creator of Peanuts, lifetime earnings - pounds 18m First colour Mickey Mouse cel, sold to private buyer - pounds...

Workplace Rights: Whither equality law?(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... The UK's discrimination laws have developed over the past 40 years, largely to comply with various EU directives. The main grounds protected are race, religion or belief, disability, sex, sexual orientation and age. From October, a new single...

History Lessons: Image is everything - Emperor augustus.(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Anyone who thinks PR is a modern invention should look at Augustus, the first Roman emperor. Having taken power in Rome in 31BC, he projected a carefully constructed image of self-deprecation, while at the same time rebuilding the city as a...

Your Route to the Top: How to stop worrying.(business)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Take charge. Worrying is good in moderation, as it keeps you on your toes, but wallowing is pointless. You can prepare your team until they know the presentation inside out; you can't change anything once they're delivering it. Accept what you...

Why Business is like... The Edinburgh Fringe.(business and an artsfestival)
August 1, 2007... The Edinburgh Fringe is now the biggest arts festival in the world But wind back to 1947, when it began, and it was just a small gathering of eight uninvited theatre companies performing on the fringes of a major cultural event, the Edinburgh...

Do it Right: Keep your office safe.(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Strike the right balance. It's important to be secure, but no-one wants to work in a fortress. Cameras, passes and intercoms are all good; if you're installing retina scanners, you've probably gone too far. Plan people's access. There is...

Slogan Doctor: BP - 'beyond petroleum'.(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... 'Beyond Petroleum', introduced by BP in 2000, was not so much a slogan as a new identity. Written by David Fowler of ad agency Ogilvy, it dumped the baggage that comes with being called British and, with the new sunflower logo, hinted at a...

How does he manage? Ethical business guru.(environmental campaign)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... WHEN DID YOU BECOME A MANAGER? I was an environmental campaigner for 20 years, for everyone from Friends of the Earth to Greenpeace. Now I'm a sole trader, advising organisations on how they treat the planet and their workers. My work...

Remember This.(quotations)(Aristotle and Oscar Wilde)(Quotation)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... 'Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work' - Aristotle said it 'It is better to have a permanent income than be fascinating' - oscar wilde said it

Are you suffering from: Financial phobia.(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... It took a Cambridge psychologist and a poll of 10,000 people for the online bank Egg to figure out what many of us already know - that those white envelopes from the bank are best left unopened. Financial Phobia is an acute sense of anxiety and...

Words-worth: Conversation.(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... The art of conversation is dying, but not in business. A 'conversation' is a civilised exchange of thoughts and words, to which both parties contribute. That makes it an odd word to describe what happens between a company and its customers,...

Stat of the month: Drugs headache - Pounds 1.5bn - Value of Afghanistan's opium exports.(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Coalition forces may have rid Afghanistan of Taliban rule, but they cooked up a major problem in the process - the country's illicit opium exports are booming. Afghanistan is near to becoming the world's biggest narcotics supplier, now...

How He made his Pile: Gordon 'butch' Stewart - Hotelier.(Sandals and Beaches holiday resorts)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Who is he? The Jamaican 'Cupid of the Caribbean' owns the all-inclusive Sandals and Beaches holiday resorts. He also runs the Jamaica Observer newspaper, sponsors the under-achieving Windies cricket team, and was credited with saving Air...

Denis Waxman: If I had to start again..(Hays recruitment group's chief executive officer; retirement)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Both of my kids are successful academics, and when I hear about their Oxford life I think I would like to have done that. But I never had the patience, and I'm not intellectually bright enough. I didn't get any qualifications from school. ...

Crash Course in... Networking.(business)
August 1, 2007... - Your career's in a rut; you've had no calls from headhunters for months and, internally, people treat you like part of the office furniture. And you're not bringing in heaps of new business for the company. Time you did a bit less networking...

MT Masterclass: Thought leadership.(Management Today)
August 1, 2007... What is it? This is the not exactly modest role assigned to themselves by management consultancies and strategy firms. We, the followers, require the great ones of business strategy to provide intellectual leadership. We simply cannot work...

Decisions: Sophi Tranchell - Divine, MD of the farmer-owned fair-trade chocolate company.(managing director)
August 1, 2007... MY BEST... I used to work in the film industry as managing director of an arthouse film distribution company that distributed foreign movies - and one of my best decisions was responding eight years ago to the tiny newspaper advertisement...

Behind the Spin: Kwik Save.
August 1, 2007... THE DILEMMA There isn't really much of a dilemma left for Kwik Save. Its ignominious descent into administration last month was a sad end to a company founded in 1959 that at one point boasted more than 1,000 stores. Yet not all is...

Don't shoot the adviser.(external consultants)
August 1, 2007... You can't blame consultants on public-sector projects for taking their fees. It's down to officials to make sure the advice is of high quality. Fancy a penny off your income tax rate? Here's an idea: ban all spending by government bodies...

Books: The wacky world of Wiki.(Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything)(Book review)
August 1, 2007... Web 2.0 is spawning viable business models in unexpected corners Roger Parry welcomes a book that describes how people power is conquering the internet. As the frenzy of the early internet has matured into the relative stability of Web...

Books: An ad retrospective that omits the spice.(Adland: A Global History of Advertising)(Book review)
August 1, 2007... This is a definitive record of 50 years of persuasion, says Tim Ashton, but it's oddly silent on the industry's current crisis. I can count on the fingers of a mittened hand the number of tomes on advertising I've picked up, enjoyed and...

Books: Three of a kind - Behind The Smoke and Mirrors of PR.(public relations books)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Where the Truth Lies Edited by Julia Hobsbawm Atlantic Books Pounds 12.99 Best of its kind Public Relations: A practical guide to the basics Philip Henslowe Kogan Page pounds 16.99 Could be useful Can We Do...

Books: In the slipstream of O'Leary.(Ryanair's Michael O'Leary)(Michael O'Leary: A Life in Full Flight: The Story of the Man Who Made Ryanair Take Off)(Book review)
August 1, 2007... What started life as an MT feature has crystallised into a life of the turbulent boss of Europe's most successful budget airline. Matthew Gwyther tightens his seatbelt. We're a bit short of colour in business these days. The iron grip of...

The MT Interview: Roland Rudd.(Interview)
August 1, 2007... He's a social dynamo at the hub of Britain's business and political life, and his advice is sought by the bosses of a quarter of the top 100 blue-chips. His sideline is to run a serious campaigning body that aims to make the EU more...

Has the ad biz lost its lustre?(advertising business)
August 1, 2007... In the golden age of the 1970s and '80s, colourful executives earned huge fees for classic campaigns like those above. But creative standards have slipped. Alex Benady reports. In the bad old days before the British railway network was...

John Lewis: Partners on board.
August 1, 2007... Democracy runs deep in John Lewis - the firm has been employee-owned since 1929, and five of its 10 main directors are elected to the role. EMMA DE VITA talks to two of them, and discovers that business and politics can mix. It's a dreary...

The Gospel according to Edward De Bono.(Interview)
August 1, 2007... Blair to Branson, Gorbachev to Gerry Adams: many and varied are those who have sat at the feet of the lord of lateral thinking and pope of H+. Dave Waller tracked the philosopher/guru to his Maltese birthplace but found it an unsettling...

Turning up the wireless.
August 1, 2007... Cable-free communications technologies have revolutionised the way we work, and there is much more to come. Ron Condon explains the innovations and their terminology. Wireless communication, in its many guises, promises to change the way...

Table Talk: Where Tim Smit eats..(The Med Kitchen)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... I never go out for business lunches - I only really have them here at the Eden Project. There just doesn't seem much point when we've got so much here, and the local town has nowhere else to eat. That's not an exaggeration. I don't mean the...

On The Road.(Ford Mondeo Zetec)(Product/service evaluation)
August 1, 2007... On the road, Ford's new Mondeo Zetec often has the advantage over its more expensive rivals. It's perverse, but the fact that people want large family hatchbacks like the Ford Mondeo a little less every year is making cars of this kind...

What's your problem?(question and answer)(office matters)
August 1, 2007... It's a teambuilding effort and you can't build a team if one member keeps wafting in and out. Q: I've been asked by the son of a close friend to invest in his start-up business. He seems serious about it, having done some market research...

First-class coach.(working relationships)
August 1, 2007... She chose to impress clients with her thinking skills rather than her prowess with a golf club wedge. Q: I'm a teetotaller and because I don't go boozing with my work colleagues, they treat me like some sort of social pariah. I feel...

The Sharp End: My day with the ice man.(Steven's Ice Cream Van)
August 1, 2007... Scoop! Our man in the van Rhymer Rigby learns to churn a mean single cone... Ice-cream vans tend to be independently owned and I hadn't the foggiest about how to get in touch with an ice-cream vendor, other than flagging one down in the...