Very few things are more frustrating, especially when you are busy, than to be constantly called into meetings that are a waste of time. They start late, don’t appear to have an agenda or objective, no conclusion or action is reached, people arrive late and the meeting stops to update them, people are allowed to…

10 steps for organising effective meetings So if you are calling a meeting what steps do you need to follow to ensure it is valuable and productive? 1. Think about whether you need to call a meeting, or could you just send out an email with a status update? There is a fine line to…

Humans automatically relate new things that happen with something within our experience. We are biologically primed to learn from past events .This is usually helpful to us as it lets us draw on our background and experience, and build on what we have previously learned. We are naturally lazy thinkers and so we tend to…

What characterises creative people? Some of the characteristics that creative people will display are a willingness to challenge assumptions, keep searching after they have their first idea, take risks, are not afraid to make mistakes, are naturally inquisitive, have a strong imagination, think visually, take the initiative, are adaptable, see patterns of events. The Game…

Creative Thinking Business Tools Even if you don’t consider yourself creative, you can learn some useful skills and techniques to help you tap into creative ‘right brain’ thinking and bring a new perspective to problems in business or indeed in your private life. Let’s have a look in detail at some popular business tools for…

The 6 Thinking Hats Game This is a technique developed by Edward De Bono, a designer of constructive and conceptual thinking methods. Six coloured hats are used to symbolise different thinking emotions or direction. White hat- Information, data Red hat –intuition, emotion Black hat -Negative, cautious Yellow hat –benefits and advantages Green hat –creativity, alternatives…

Organisations today are constantly under pressure to improve business performance, measure their own performance against world class standards and focus their efforts on the customer. Many use business excellence models to help them achieve their goals. There are a number of techniques, recognised internationally, used to drive business performance and success, and any number of…

There are several different models for each of these techniques, such as the Baldrige model and Balanced Scorecard. We will not attempt to go into detail here about the different models, but will confine ourselves to consideration of the techniques in principle. Business Excellence models are widely seen as important for any organisation that aims…

This quiz is designed to test your knowledge of these modules of the “Managing The Business” lessons in the Management Skills Courses, specifically;- Effective meetings Effective meetings Part 2 Creative Thinking in Business Creative Thinking in Business Part 2 Creative Thinking in Business Part 3 Creative Thinking in Business Part 4 Optimising Business Performance to drive success Business Excellence…