The person chairing at a recent meeting kicked it off with an unexpected question. “How are you feeling and what have you done today?”  It was enough to take me right out of my comfort zone and this unusual opening had a hugely positive impact on the meeting. The answers – which...

“I am very cautious of people who are absolutely right, especially when they are vehemently so.” ― Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years As a young trainee with Arthur Andersen, more years ago than I’m going to willingly admit to, we had to investigate companies, analyse accounts and...

It has been almost impossible to miss the discussion and debate about Cryptocurrency in the last 3 months. For a brief time either side of Christmas, the internet was 50% more interested in what was happening with Bitcoin and the Cryptocurrency bubble than one of its favorite topics, Donald...

Show me how a person is rewarded and I will predict their actions. Maybe it’s a coincidence that as I write this article the sports news has been dominated by the end of the 2018 January transfer window. Possibly that’s what drew me to make a parallel between football agents...

We all like a nice surprise, but nobody likes a shock and avoiding shocks from suppliers should be a central principle when selecting and managing them.  You can’t predict every bump, but you can put measures in place to minimise their impact. We returned to work in the UK...

I’m always struck by the number of articles at the turn of each year making predictions for the coming 12 months.  This year I felt it was time to dig out a few from last December and call them to account to see what actually happened. Online accounting software...

2017 has been an exciting year for many reasons. An early sign of the year-end is watching the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Congratulations to Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis-Hill, both incredibly deserving of the recognition they received this year. Elsewhere in sport we saw some kind of...

This article comes from Malcolm Smith, JMCL Consultant. Blue Ocean Strategy was a seminal work that came out of INSEAD in 2004.  Written by Rene Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim it presents the concept of value innovation through a range of models which help the reader to look at...

A deeper understanding of the business, suppliers and end-customers can – with some suppliers – lead to not just better management of day-to-day transactions, but create long-term engagements for greater value. “It’s vital to remember that at the end of most supplier / customer transactions is an end-customer” says Jonny...

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”. What have the words of George Santayana got to do with supplier relationships.? Well interest rate raises, Brexit, currency turbulence, falling productivity, the continuing ripples of the 2007/8 banking crisis and quantitative easing – not to mention the...