Remember when we talked about getting ‘back to normal’? Yes, I did too, and here we are. This week I have attended a large conference, courtesy of the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development, in Manchester. Billed as a hybrid conference, their CEO, Peter Cheese, freely admitted this was an experiment to see how things…
Budgets are topical if not popular right now for two reasons: in the UK, our Chancellor of the Exchequer (Government Finance Director) Rishi Sunak has unveiled made his annual budget statement this week, and secondly as we move into November and the end of the calendar year, finance departments in many organizations start talking budgets…
Returning to my first post lockdown conference was an interesting experience, highlighting how different our live conversations are from those on Zoom/Teams/Goto/your online tool of choice. What has also been interesting is what we are talking about: other people not being there, or even at work. “The Great Resignation” has become a ‘thing’ in 2021,…
“Please remember that past performance may not be indicative of future results.” How many times have you seen and heard that? Here it is again. I bring this to your consciousness once more while I urge you to look at your calendar. Graphs of stock market performance are plentiful and available right now on your…
A tool for root cause analysis. Many of my regular readers (including you in the steel industry!) will be acutely aware of the energy cost situation right now. Headlines this week have been making connections between meat on (or maybe not?) UK supermarket shelves, with one supermarket chief suggesting a tabloid friendly ‘Christmas is cancelled’…
To my friends and readers across the Gulf and Middle East – I mention gambling, but I am definitely not advocating it. This is about something that affects every business. “I don’t understand probability theory” was my wife’s response to a snippet from a magazine article. The Financial Times interviewed Dapper Dan, ‘the father of…