Social media, Twitter, Google +, Facebook, trip advisor etc. may be the marketing tools in vogue just now but how much time are you spending listening to what your customers are saying about you?

I never find it much fun playing with PowerPoint but this time it’s been really easy - I've cut out 75% of my slides! Why, because I'll be telling lots of stories instead. We all remember the stories we learnt as children so why not for businesses?

What games should we be playing to help us keep our brains business fit?  Here is a fun list for you…

Consistency was definitely a theme and this got me thinking about how inconsistent we are in our businesses, especially how inconsistent our delivery of customer experience is to our clients. Not always, but our delivery, our product quality, availability, our service and of course our moods, can be so inconsistent.

I'll bet a penny to a pound that you don't have a job description – you’ll have a job title – and your team will call you the boss. As a small business owner I know that you'll end up doing everything in the business.

It happens every day doesn't it: a problem that has to be solved. There are those everyday life problems that we solve every day; we just do most of them subconsciously. As a business leader the working day throws up even more problems sometimes they are sudden and unexpected, but sometimes they are complex or deep rooted problems.

As a business leader it is your responsibility to solve, or to make sure that, problems are solved. Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.

So the TIGER (Thames Gateway Innovation, Growth and Enterprise) fund has been launched although it’s not open for applications until 8 April. It is sure to be swamped with applications for the £20M on offer as match funded interest free loans that are unsecured. But how do you stand out from the crowd and make […]

Problem solving is challenging but it’s critical to business success. But too many businesses spend far too much time, money and energy putting up with problems in their businesses rather than solving them.