Archive for September, 2008

Design = Meaning

Posted by Sharon 30 September 2008

A fascinating little snippet from a Fast Company article  Masters of Design by Bill Breen (June 2004):
Behind every design there is a thought process… every design process confronts a time, a material and a function problem… (Chris Bangle, BMW)… and every design has implications for your brand and your reputation.
Whilst Bangle is talking ostensibly about […]

Would you be willing to try something?

Posted by Sharon 26 September 2008

Flicking through Robert Cialdini’s latest offering - Yes! 50 Scientifically  Proven ways to be  Persuasive and came across the section on the hypothetical questions.  I have long recommended it as a way to soften a request and avoid an outright “no”.  Cialdini and his colleagues Noah Goldstein and Steve Martin, say that there is […]

Gain control back from your inbox

Posted by Sharon 25 September 2008

Paul has been reading about new email studies which confirm the time is right for our new offering eORGANISING (TM).
1. It takes more than a minute (on average) to recover your train of thought after an interruption by email (see more at Dr Thomas Jackson’s research, quoted in SMH Next).
2. Over half of us spend […]

Spring and passion is in the air

Posted by Sharon 25 September 2008

It’s spring, it’s passion month and I’ve just returned from the XL Entrepreneur Business School in Bali.  What did I learn - lots!
First, you cannot achieve anything amazing on your own.  The entrepreneurs who wanted to “own” all the ideas and way their business was going to run, has much smaller ideas that those who […]

Hassle me - great for follow up

Posted by Sharon 8 September 2008

One of my favourite websites is www.hassleme.co.uk which allows anyone to set up regular reminders - at no cost.
When you click on the website it asks you what you want to be hassled about,  to what email address and roughly how frequently.
I have a hasslebot to hassle me to write a blog about every two […]

Celebrate International Passion Day everyday

Posted by Sharon 4 September 2008

Janet and Chris Attwood, authors of the book “The Passion Test” have declared 30th September International Passion Day and have challenged their readers to take at least one action a day to “follow our passion and begin fulfilling our life’s purpose”.
Well, with our business name, we had to rise to the challenge (and of course […]

Market to your Ideal Client or else…

Posted by Sharon 3 September 2008

A great interview by Coert Visser with David Maister.  The choice is starkly laid out for small businesses, especially Maister’s niche of professional services firms.  Paraphrasing his words - the better we are at identifying and marketing to our ideal clients, the more we get to work with interesting, likeable people and we get do […]