The financial turmoil 2007 – 2009 represented an excellent opportunity to review and to improve regulatory requirements because the industries’ readiness to adapt and change has increased during the crisis. The first crisis has put an emphasis regarding specific gaps in how banks identify, assess, control and report risks. Today we have to answer the [...]

In the fast-moving world of business, it’s vital for companies to keep up from a technology standpoint. This means that a certain amount of investment must be channeled into the IT department. This of course means that IT staff need to be equipped with the fastest and best equipment available on budget. When so much [...]

Recently I took part in a quite interesting discussion concerning innovation. The discussion focused on the generation of innovative ideas by using collaboration tools and web 2.0 / social media approaches. There were a number of interesting aspects, i.e. which stakeholder segment would generate the best ideas for an organization. The answer to this particular [...]

This post has the objective to analyze and to discuss one selected problem and barrier related to the strategic planning process; those problems and barriers for a sound strategic planning process have been indentified in both the academic and the business literature. In the last two decades a large number of articles and books related [...]

This is a quote from the famous zoologist and animal film-maker Bernhard Grzimek. I liked this quote right from the beginning because it made me smile and it seemed to have the potential for a running gag. I want to make one thing clear right from the beginning. I am sure the ocelot is an [...]

As you might remember, our team was completed by our baby last year. Our little daughter is now 14 months old and makes us very happy. Looking back at the time with her, I see some parallels between living with a baby and strategic management: Let’s start with the time before the baby arrives. The [...]

This is a little story from my daily travel to work that happened some years ago. I went to work by car and had to refuel about every two weeks. There was a gas station that was situ-ated very conveniently on my morning route. Thus, I was a regular customer there. I did not care [...]

Keeping track of all tasks and projects can be difficult sometimes. However, this is an essential part of manager’s roles. That led us to the question, whether there are any small pieces of software which might help managers to keep track of all their duties. Well, in most cases you might use MS Outlook (or [...]

A provider of on-demand sales tools and related services has published an interesting paper on cost cutting. Its title is quite promising: “Simple Savvy Savings – 9 ideas to make anyone a Cost-Cutting Hero”. The underlying idea behind this paper is the current financial crisis and the resulting consequences, i.e. in terms of cost cutting: [...]

A few days ago I did participate in a discussion concerning the transfer of existing print mail campaigns to new e-mail-campaigns. An issue within this discussion was, whether and to what extent content and structure should be changed. The basic answer can be summarized as follows: E-Mail campaigns are quite different in comparison to print [...]