Management Today articles from November 2006

Management Today archives from November 2006

Editorial: Riches from the rag trade.(Editorial)
November 1, 2006... The glitz and the glamour; the taffeta, the tantrums and the tiaras; the model's staple diet of Marlboros, black Lavazza and devil's dandruff... To an outsider, the world of fashion is a strange business, with all sorts of weird behaviours and...

Contributors.
November 1, 2006... VAL GOODING Bupa's boss reviews Tough Choices by Carly Fiorina, late of Hewlett-Packard. Gooding calls the first autobiog to be written by a female CEO from a major firm an intriguing read - and a timely one, given the spy saga now...

Chartered Management Institute: In my opinion.(Phil Wheatley on prison administration )
November 1, 2006... Chartered Management Institute Companion Phil Wheatley argues that a clear strategy and active leadership are raising standards in the Prison Service. In a climate of concern about law and order, our prisons are high on the media and...

The mt diary.
November 1, 2006... Washington's Straw poll; PC for dummies; shoeless in the buffet bar; tilting at Branson. A trip to New York and Washington in the autumn is always pleasant. This year, the mid-term elections approach, and the continued high death toll in...

Brainfood: Ten ways to ... write a press release.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... 1. Know your story 2. Ask yourself: is this news? 3. Understand the medium's audience... 4.... and its deadlines 5. Tie the story in with current events 6. Put the good stuff at the top 7. Give them facts, not hype 8. Keep it...

Brain Food: It'll never fly - Tribute bands.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... 'Thank you for the music, the song I'm singing,' crooned Abba in 1983. Those words must resonate with the hundreds of acts now making a living off the Swedish supergroup's success. For journeyman musicians, the tribute band - based on a tenuous...

Brain Food: How does he manage? - Adult nightclub owner.
November 1, 2006... PETER STRINGFELLOW FOUNDER, STRINGFELLOWS When did you become a manager? I started in 1962, running a church hall disco that evolved into the Black Cat club. My dad was my doorman, and my mother was the cashier. I booked the...

Brain Food: Earning curve - Fast food.(restaurants )(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Value of Britain's fast-food market ('05) pounds 7.4bn Yum! Brands (Pizza Hut, KFC), operating profit ('05) pounds 617m West Cornwall Pasty Co, turnover ('05) pounds 18m Simon Woodroffe, founder Yo! Sushi, wealth pounds 7m Branch manager,...

Brain Food: Workplace rights - Age bias in recruitment.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Hiring staff is rarely a straightforward exercise, but the age discrimination laws that came into force last month have created fresh banana skins for employers. For example, a job ad using words like 'energetic' and 'dynamic' is not overtly...

Brain Food: Your route to the top - Selling at scale.(marketing )(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Zoom out. Think strategically about the system you are selling into. Avoid jumping straight to tactics, such as how to close the deal. You need to know who to deal with first. Figure out who holds the purse strings. Who might say 'no'...

Brain Food: History lessons - Sell the dream ..(Nike Inc.'s Phil Knight)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Worth dollars 7.9 billion now, Nike founder Knight started by selling shoes from his car boot at athletics meetings. In 1964, the ex-middle-distance runner knew the appeal of affordable, high-performance shoes and imported his early wares...

Brain Food: Why business is like ... the Fosbury flop.(Dick Fosbury)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Dick Fosbury, a virtually unknown athlete at the time, took the 1968 Olympics by storm, winning a gold medal and setting a new Olympic record in the high jump. He'd spent years quietly perfecting a new technique and by '68 he was ready to turn...

Brain Food: Do it right - Letting people go.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Know where you stand. Understand fully the rules and legal obligations of employment law and you'll minimise the risk of a tribunal. Even if you'd win in the end, you'll want to avoid the process. Make sure it's necessary. If you're making...

Brain Food: Slogan doctor - Nescafe: It's all about you.(Nestle S.A.)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... This is the me generation - but aren't they all? Which is no doubt why Nestle chose 'It's all about you' as its slogan for Nescafe. It aims to present this unremarkable staple of modern life as a treat. It is meant to appeal to the...

Brain Food: Are you suffering from Interpol syndrome.(marketing )(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... You run into someone you know at the train station and he remembers every single little detail. 'You were wearing a Pucci blouse. It was early June, you were coming back from a meeting and had, I remember, a sore knee...' and so on. Interpol...

Brain Food: Words-worth - Monetisation.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... As the pace of change increases, nostalgia kicks in even quicker. How amusing to see the return of 'monetisation'. A central idea of the dot-com boom, it has been revived as part of the hype for Web 2.0, a new slant on the internet that...

Brain Food: We'd love that job - Jewellery designer.(Solange Azagury-partridge)(Interview)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Solange Azagury-partridge What do you do? I design jewellery and sell it through my eponymous shop - my clients tend to be people who don't want mainstream jewellery. Many are celebrities. A lot of my work has a linguistic link. For...

Brain Food: Remember this.(quotations )(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... 'Nothing is sometimes the right thing to say' - MALCOLM FORBES SAID IT 'I don't want any yes-men. Tell me the truth - even if it costs you your job' - SAMUEL GOLDWYN SAID IT.

Brain Food: 1st to 6th - The US's global competitiveness ranking.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... STAT OF THE MONTH - AMERICA ON THE SLIDE It looks as though America's cavalier attitude to cash is catching up with it. Thanks to its spiralling budget deficit, the US economy is no longer the world's most competitive, according to the...

Brain Food: How she made her pile - Leona Helmsley, Property Magnate.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Who is she? The 86-year-old hotelier famously quipped that 'only the little people pay taxes' - before being sent down for 18 months for tax evasion. She's worth about dollars 1 billion. How did she make her millions? She married Harry...

Brain Food: Sir Robin Saxby - If i had to start again ..(ARM Holdings PLC)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... When I was young, I could see that banking and computing paid more than engineering. If money were my motive, I would have taken a completely different path. As it turns out, I've ended up with more money than most bankers, and had a more...

Brain Food: Crash course in ... Handling customer complaints.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... You've had a letter from a customer complaining that their previous complaints weren't taken seriously. It's made you wonder if there are other unhappy customers out there. So how might you be doing better? Define a complaint. ISO 10002...

Brain Food: mt Masterclass - Compliance.(corporat governance )(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... What is it? The moment comes in most management meetings when someone raises the question of compliance. The word is often met with a sigh of resignation. Narrowly, compliance means not breaking the law, but in practice it means complying with...

Brain Food: Decisions - Antony Buck, co-founder, REN Clean Skincare.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... MY BEST... So you're suddenly in a very rarefied group of people, and stuff happens that doesn't happen if you don't commit yourself. You will end up in situations and talking to people that most people won't. The two things that we...

Brain Food: Behind the spin.(Northern Foods PLC)
November 1, 2006... THE DILEMMA It's tough times for Northern Foods, the creator of Goodfella's pizza, Pork Farms pies and Fox's biscuits. The manufacturer, which supplies ready meals and branded nosh to Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and...

And now the end is near.(inheritance and succession)
November 1, 2006... An orderly succession is hard to pull off. For Plcs, the short-term pain of a proper selection process must be endured to find the best person. Nobody will be taking lessons in successful transition from this Government. For all the talk...

Books: When the going gets tough ..(Tough Choices: A memoir)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... The career of the world's first global businesswoman is an object lesson in both the opportunities and stumbling-blocks facing women at work, says Val Gooding. This book is a first: the first autobiography by a female CEO of a major...

Books: Old vintage in a new bottle.(Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... The final book in Daniel Goleman's trilogy has the same readability and the same flaw of coralling an old concept and giving it a new name. Adrian Furnham reports. Social Intelligence: The new science of human relationships Daniel...

Books: Three of a kind - How to blog with aplomb.
November 1, 2006... Blogwild! Andy Wibbels Nicholas Brealey pounds 9.99 The Corporate Blogging Book Debbie Weil Piatkus pounds 12.99 Naked Conversations Robert Scobel and Shel Israel Wiley pounds 16.99

Books: Heroes squeezed through a template.(Success Built to Last)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... Snippets, cliches and namedropping are offered here, rather than real character studies of achievers, says Nigel Nicholson. Success Built to Last Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery and Mark Thompson Pearson pounds 14.99 To order, visit...

The mt interview: Kim Winser.(Aquascutum Group PLC)(Interview)
November 1, 2006... Spotted as a potential tennis star at 18, she forsook that dream for another: a career in the retail business. She was to become an ace there too, rising to youngest-ever director at M&S, then headhunted to fix Pringle. Can she turn around...

Planning untying the knot.(business planning )
November 1, 2006... While pressure groups want to rein developers back, many in UK Plc see the planning system as slow, bureaucratic and hostile to business. A Government report on whether it is actually stifling economic growth is expected soon. Can a fast...

An ethical rebalance.(monastries )
November 1, 2006... The hit TV series The Monastery, filmed at Worth Abbey, put meaning into people's lives. Could this unique place put ethics into your business too? MARK VERNON reports. The organisers of offsite away-days are good at picking striking...

Why suits don't get IT.(information technology workers)
November 1, 2006... In most firms, there's a perpetual stand-off between techie staff and their lay colleagues, as a new MT survey confirms. How can the geek gap be bridged? RHYMER RIGBY reports. In Douglas Coupland's latest novel jPod, the lack of empathy -...

Clear Winners.(Management Writing Awards)
November 1, 2006... MT presents the victors of the third annual MCA/MT Management Writing Awards. We're pleased to name Charles Handy as winner of Best Management Book for his inspiring autobiography Myself and Other More Important Matters. Entries were...

Britain's most admired companies.(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... The winners of the 2006 Britain's Most Admired Companies awards will be revealed exclusively in next month's MT. Which company and which leader will win the ultimate acclaim of their peer group in these prestigious corporate annual awards? Who...

Table Talk: Where Eloise Tooke eats ..(Fino Restaurant )(Restaurant review)
November 1, 2006... My favourite restaurant is Fino in Charlotte Street, London. It's a Spanish place, described as a tapas restaurant - but it's more structured than that, with bigger dishes. It strikes a very good balance: it's located in a funky basement, but...

On the road: Few mechanical makeovers are as emphatic as that of the 2007 Range Rover, but there's a big price hike.(Product/service evaluation)
November 1, 2006... The last thing the much-vilified Chelsea tractor set needs right now, you'd think, is the temptation of a new behemoth with more power, more performance and a bigger engine. But that's just what Land Rover is offering in the 2007 Range Rover....

What's your problem?(staff management )
November 1, 2006... The sooner you allow it to be known that you're gay the better - I don't mean anything dramatic. Q: I'm an experienced manager who recently moved from the private to the public sector. The culture took some getting used to, but my current...

First-class coach.(motivation )
November 1, 2006... Look back at your working life to see how positive you felt when somebody praised you. Q: I know I'm capable of doing a more senior job, but I've been told I've been blocked for promotion because I'm too forthright in my views and 'don't...

MT the sharp end: Pedal the mean streets.(delivery services)
November 1, 2006... A network of messengers on two wheels and four keeps businesses spinning. To feel the rush, Rhymer Rigby saddles up for a day's hard graft as cycle courier. I start out by doing a mini-knowledge, the City of London Courier's test for...