Business can mirror life in ways that are not immediately apparent. When listening to great speakers of any field, for instance, a business perspective may emerge, sometimes without the speaker’s intention. Such moments present unique opportunities to refresh our thinking around important topics, diverging from the regular frameworks we usually get exposed to. Each...
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And you thought those 18 minutes were not about business
When you pay peanuts, you get monkeys
There is a great deal of discussion lately in Greece about the need to reduce labor costs (i.e., salaries) in the private sector in order to increase Greece’s competitiveness. The theory is that by reducing their labor costs Greek companies will be able to deliver cheaper products and services, thus become more competitive, increase...
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Is feta cheese killing my margins?
Probably not – but its price may be. Following up on my previous post on costs, it may be worthwhile to focus on Greece and the specific challenges faced by local companies. With 73 Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) per 1000 inhabitants, far exceeding the European Union norm, Greece has a dominant SME segment . This...
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Understand your costs – at all costs
“I can make more generals, but horses cost money” – Abraham Lincoln Revenues have always dominated the interest of the business community. Costs, on the other side, are reported and monitored, but in most cases they’re not as well understood. Functional Costing There are many ways to look at a company’s costs; perhaps the...
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Doing business in a bankrupt state
There’s a lot of debate and – perhaps justifiably – a lot of desperation in the private business sector about the fortunes of the Greek economy. Regardless of each one’s political and emotional views on the matter, I think we will all be better off if we spend less time hoping that the government...
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It’s All About Value, Stupid!
It’s the “Unbearable Lightness of Being” all over again. Having read a semi-sarcastic and justifiably fair assessment of the state of “professionalism” in the service industry and specifically the field of coaching, I thought back a few decades where a similar debate was going on. Several years later, and the issue of regulation in...
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The Intersection of Disciplines
The next wave of value creation will increasingly occur at the intersection of disciplines. Such convergence is the foundation of many “new” industries – the child of a marriage of equals. A classic example is in the area of technology, where IT and telecommunications have joined forces to form the “ICT” domain. Another flourishing...
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Important But Not Urgent
After a couple of years worth of work as a solitary and lone soldier, following more than a couple of decades of more traditional executive life, yesterday was the one of these extremely rare days I stayed away from my daily world of emails, tweets, blogs and e-news. To a regular, non-wired person the...
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How to stand out in a jobless market
One of the most alarming trends of the Greek financial crisis is the continuously rising unemployment. Companies in all sectors of the economy are downsizing or altogether shutting down, creating a market where thousands of highly educated and skilled people are competing for fewer and fewer job openings. In this bleak market, I have...
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The Gender Game
I caught myself playing the quota games last evening. “You need a woman in this venture…” I told a guy acquaintance as we were discussing the objectives of a particular enterprise. Of course it had to do with business and high tech as well – but thinking back I am annoyed at myself for...
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