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Open Sesami
2008-04-28 11:06:00
For those of you in London, a new deli will be opening in my neighborhood on Sunday - it's called Sesami and is located a few doors down from Herne Hill station (towards the park) on Railton Road.They're hoping to be known for their coffee, fresh fruit juice and smoothies, and healthy, mostly veggie, take-away foods. I'll be supplying them with some savoury goodies, so let me know if you've eaten something there that you liked as I might have made it!!
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Don't You Get Frustrated When...
2008-04-25 14:17:00
I've had two job interviews recently where I've been asked a question starting with the phrase, "Don't you get frustrated when..."If you're interviewing people, there are a few reasons why I would not recommend you do this.First of all, you'll get better information from a candidate if you ask an open-ended question like, "How do you feel when..." I might have volunteered other adjectives about how I felt about the scenario and how I approached it had the question been phrased differently. Instead, I was forced to justify why I did or didn't feel frustrated. Second, you're at risk of projecting your own feelings onto the candidate. I did wonder whether the question was asked because the interviewer themself got frustrated by the scenario they put forward, which then made me wonder whether this was common within the organisation and, if so, what kind of culture that created. Third, you're using an emotionally-charged word and putting the candidates in a position of second-gue...
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The Apprentice - Week 5
2008-04-24 12:06:00
An apology to my regular readers for missing last week's Apprentice . I had the good fortune to see Speed the Plow at the Old Vic instead, a fantastic night out! A key business message from the play: Canoodling with your assistant is never a good idea.This week's challenge on The Apprentice was for the teams to work with two boutique dairies to develop new ice cream flavours and sell them into new customers in London - a pretty straight-forward product development and market introduction task.It surprised me that the teams had few problems this week on the operational side, which has always been weak in past episodes. I attribute that to the fact that someone from each dairy was coaching them through the production process.What didn't surprise me was that the teams again failed to get their head around who their customers would be, what they would want, and how they would sell to them. While there are some candidates on the show with very strong communications skills, I still don...
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What's a Girl to Do?
2008-04-22 12:44:00
In February, I blogged about some research that London Business School had completed on gender stereotyping which revealed that less than half of women in leadership roles in the workplace have children. Unfortunately, this statistic can't compete with the very visible examples of women who interrupt their careers to have children. A recent example in the UK comes in the form of a high-profile newsreader who, having negotiated a very lucrative move from one network to another, got pregnant during her notice period, moved to the new employer, and only at the end of her first trimester (six weeks into the job) informed her new employer that she was pregnant.While this is all perfectly legal and within her rights, these types of actions make things difficult for the rest of us. A recently published study has shown that three-quarters of bosses in the UK would not hire a woman if they thought she might become pregnant within six months of starting work. Think about that - if you're a ...
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Fire and Motion
2008-04-11 13:21:00
I always like to take concepts from one discipline and apply them to another. Knowing this, my husband just sent me a link to an article on applying a military concept to business strategy that's worth a read. Here's an excerpt:"I've read Michael Porter and the Harvard Business Review and loads of books by management consultants, and I've never learned as much about business strategy as I did from the simple infantry concept called fire and motion (it's also sometimes referred to as fire and movement).Here is how it works. You fire at the enemy. That's the fire part. And you move forward at the same time. That's the motion. Get it?You're firing because then your enemy has to take cover. He can't fire back at you when he's cowering behind a wall. But firing is not enough. You also have to move forward, or you won't make any progress. Moving forward brings you closer to the enemy. And closer enemies are easier to hit. You need both -- fire and motion -- to accomplish anythi...
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The Apprentice - Week 3
2008-04-10 13:46:00
Last night's episode of The Apprentice was right up my street - they asked the teams to transform two pubs, bringing in new customers and seeing which team could make the bigger profit.In my blog on last week's episode, I said that I'd be looking to see if the teams would approach the 4Ps (product, price, place, promotion) in the right way in this task. They didn't.One of the things that is special about restaurants is that their location (i.e. place) is a defining factor for the product. The teams never got their heads around this. They dove into the task by brainstorming and agreeing what their pubs would serve without doing any homework on the neighborhoods they were in, who lived there, what other restaurants were around, what they served, or what they charged. It's obvious that none of the contestants have ever watched Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - one of the very first things Gordon Ramsay does when he visits a new client is to walk around the neighborhood to identify wh...
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The Survey Says...
2008-04-09 11:45:00
I read a little blurb in the Times yesterday about a study that has shown that women who have their first child by Caesarean section have fewer children than mothers who deliver by natural childbirth. While the research team admitted that they didn't really know why this difference occurred, they suspected the trauma of the surgery made women think twice about having more children.OK, I'll give you that as a possibility. But it could be because women who have the surgery were fearful of pregnancy and natural delivery to start with, so they were more likely to have fewer children even before they had the operation. It could also be that women who have this type of surgery have medical complications preventing them from delivering naturally and possibly preventing them from having more children.The results could have absolutely nothing to do with 'the trauma of surgery'. While the surgery itself is linked to fewer children (i.e. it's correlated) it hasn't necessarily directly re...
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The Apprentice - Week 2
2008-04-03 11:53:00
On last night's 'The Apprentice ' the teams were asked to start up a 24-hour laundry service. Both of the teams made the same mistake this week - thinking that this task was about sales when it was really about understanding the value proposition of the business. Neither team started the task by thinking about who their customer would be, what they would value, and how cost effective (in terms of money, time, and human resource) that type of service might be. They made many of the same mistakes as last week.The boys eventually fell upon a sustainable value proposition - along with winning a large corporate order of bed linens, they started taking in bedding and other types of domestic linens that were too big and bothersome for residential customers to do themselves. The girls, on the other hand, sold at random, taking in whatever orders they could get, and never quite putting in place an operating model that would allow them to properly return those orders. It surprised me, too,...
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A Preview of 2012?
2008-04-02 12:20:00
Almost as soon as it was announced that London would host the 2012 Summer Olympics, friends and family started to contact me to see if they could come and stay with me during the games. They're mostly amazed when I tell them that London is pretty much the last place I want to be during the event.I think they're starting to understand why considering what's been happening with the recent opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow. From all reports, the first full week of the new terminal being opened will be nothing short of chaos for travellers. The worst part has been the half-hearted acceptance of the situation coming from within the UK. We are, in case you didn't know, simply terrible at these sorts of things. That's just the way it is. So sorry if you've been caught up in and inconvenienced by it all, but you should have expected it.Newspaper reports about Terminal 5 have focused on the past failures of major programmes in the UK, as well as the inability of most of the UK's trans...
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Yanks Vs Brits
2008-03-31 12:59:00
There's an interesting article in this week's Economist that discusses the results of a comprehensive survey they undertook to test attitudinal differences between people in the US and the UK. They found some surprising similarities and differences. If, like me, you have ties to both or either community, it's worth reading the article and the full poll results.
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The Apprentice - Week 1
2008-03-27 12:22:00
Last night was the start of the new series of 'The Apprentice ' on BBC2. Most of the write-ups on the show tend to be about the personalities involved, who did what, who got fired, etc. Rather than focusing on the characters, I like to watch the show to assess what the task was about and to watch how the teams make some very basic (and easily corrected) business mistakes. So here's what came out of last night's episode:The first task is usually a no-brainer - a low value product so Sir Alan doesn't lose a ton of cash if things go horribly wrong, a short time frame for completion to increase the drama, and not too many tasks within the project itself so that the teams can start quickly and actually complete it. To me, this first task is set up so the teams can get used to working together - it's not about swamping them with something they can't achieve or putting them in a position where they might make or lose a lot of money.To my surprise, the teams don't really get this. Th...
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Advertising Art
2008-03-26 11:54:00
Yesterday, my husband suggested that we go to see the exhibit 'Coming of Age: American Art' at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. We enjoyed the exhibit - it was a good size and selection, enough to give a novice viewer a clear understanding of how American art developed over the years. While we were walking home, I mentioned to my husband that I had seen one of the paintings in an advertisement for the exhibit, but it wasn't my favourite painting in the exhibit, nor did it make me want to see the exhibit. My husband said that he had also seen the same advertisement, but had seen a second ad with a different painting that made him read more about what would be on display. It was the description of the exhibit, rather than the artwork, that made him suggest we go to the gallery.That made us wonder...how does the artwork used to advertise exhibits get selected?We came up with four principles:1. The artist or curator selects their favourite piece, hoping that if they like it, their target...
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You Won't Be Able To Say 'No' To Me Anymore
2008-03-13 16:36:00
When I did my sales training a life-time ago, I was taught to ask a lot of questions that my customer had to say 'yes' to before making the big and final 'ask' - that way the customer is already predisposed to agreeing with you. It's pretty effective, although it's nice to mix it with other techniques.Handily, I found a book today that will help me develop and update some of those other techniques. It's called 'Yes! - 50 secrets from the science of persuasion'.Ordinarily, I wouldn't recommend a book until I've read it all the way through, but this one had me hooked and convinced by page 30. Three main reasons:1. This book is about the science, rather than the art, of persuasion. The authors have actually done research and experiments to test and prove their concepts.2. Most of the techniques are small and subtle changes to things you may already be doing (aligning with the 'even better if...' method).3. It's nice to know when someone else is playing you using the conce...

Winning at Work
2008-03-06 14:42:00
During most MBA programmes, students are taught about the Prisoner's Dilemma - usually during a strategy or statistics course. The basics of the Prisoner's Dilemma are that two people are asked to work together to decide the outcome of a given scenario, and the actions they take lead to one of four possible results:1. Neither participant gets what they want/need (lose-lose).2. I get what I need, but you don't (I win, you lose).3. You get what you need, but I don't (you win, I lose).4. We both get something we want/need (win-win).While the Prisoner's Dilemma is often used in business to formulate strategy or in negotiations, it's a good model to keep in mind in every interaction you have with other people.As an example, my very first boss ever (one of my 'best bosses') used to regularly promote the activities and achievements of her individual team members to higher-ups in the organisation. This always struck me as a very nice and somewhat altruistic thing to do, especially s...
More About: Work , Winning

Do You Doodle?
2008-03-03 12:00:00
If you're looking for a distraction in the office or during your commute, there's a clever little book out that you might enjoy. It's called The Doodle Notebook, and provides some very tongue-in-cheek pro-formas for you to doodle in. Have fun with it!

What Does XX Mean To You?
2008-02-28 14:38:00
When I was job hunting toward the end of my MBA in 1996, I attended an information session given by a large, multinational manufacturer of consumer products. They were looking to hire someone into their 'fast-track' management programme, which meant that, if employed, you would spend three years working at their headquarters, and then would move to different positions around the world every three years after that.They very emphatically stated at the end of the session that they did not encourage married women to apply for the role because they needed candidates who would be truly mobile. This didn't sit well with me, particularly since my husband and I had made two international moves in five years, one of which was so that I could undertake my MBA in the UK. So I queried the presenter - surely they would consider someone with my history and background? They did. I made it all the way through to the final interviews.To my surprise, I received a phone call from the last person who...

More Lessons From Dogs
2008-02-27 13:05:00
It seems that we can learn a lot from our fuzzy, four-legged friends.Several months ago, I wrote a post on what I learned from my dog about change management. For those of you who enjoyed it, there is an article in this month's Oprah magazine about the five life lessons the author has learned from her dogs. Click here to read it.
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So You Want To Be A Consultant...
2008-02-20 15:55:00
It's that time of year when MBA students are starting to assess their job offers, and at least a third of them in any given class will be dreaming of a career in consulting. Funnily enough, I was one of those people who wanted to be anything but a management consultant, who avoided all of the consulting-related electives, and who didn't interview at a single consulting firm during my MBA. Twelve years later, I've spent about 80% of my career working as a consultant - for myself, for a large 'name-brand' firm, and for a small boutique company.To help those of you who are making decisions about your career right now, I've compiled a list of pros and cons regarding working in consulting. Good luck, I hope it helps you find a job that suits you!PROS - Consulting allows you to... - Have great variety in your career - it's perfect for people who like to learn new skills, gain experience in new industries, and meet and work with new people in new places. - Sometimes have a lot of c...
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Even Better If...
2008-02-18 13:28:00
In consulting, during team meetings you often hear the phrase "that would be even better if...". It's a way to acknowledge that someone has a good idea, but there's potential to make it even more powerful. There was an article in yesterday's Times about how more businesses and executives are employing coaches as part of their development. The article highlighted the fact that many of these arrangements are not to address performance issues, but to help make the executives 'even better' at their work.In this frame of mind, the last consulting company I worked for offered all of their consultants executive coaches. As part of the senior management team there, I found my coach invaluable. While I had a hard time finding pre-packaged training courses that could teach me new skills or effective ways to solve the immediate problems my team was facing, I could call on my coach for very targeted advice. She helped me to re-frame issues so that I could develop and implement solutions, a...

Big Bang Theory
2008-02-15 12:22:00
Last night, the show 'Big Bang Theory ' was on Channel 4 at 10:00 for the first time in the UK. I watched it, and laughed so hard that I'm surprised I didn't disturb my neighbours. It was a blast from the past - from my time at university - and while I know the characters are made up for TV, they definitely had traits of people I've befriended, studied, and worked with.I had planned on doing a blog about what it's like to be a well-rounded female at a hard-core science and engineering university. Now I don't have to. If you're interested in knowing what it's like, watch the show. Then imagine yourself surrounded by several thousand of these people for four-to-eight years (longer, if you decide to work in your chosen field of study). Please let me know if you were excited or terrified after that. For those of you who have actually experienced it, how much of yourself do you see in the show? I'll be the first to admit I was *this close* to buying the periodic table shower cur...
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Giri
2008-02-14 11:41:00
Every Valentine's Day, I'm taken back to one of the early Valentine's Days that I spent in Tokyo.In Japan, only women give gifts to men on Valentine's Day - typically boxes of chocolate - and they give to any man who is important in their life, not just to a romantic interest. Men don't give gifts to women on Valentine's Day, but reciprocate the gesture a month later on a holiday called 'White Day'.One of my good friends came to work the day after Valentine's Day telling us how her father, a very senior executive at a Japanese conglomerate, had recieved boxes and boxes of chocolate from women at his company. Being a good-but-sarcastic daughter, she pointed out to him that this wasn't because they loved him, but because of 'giri'.I had never heard of the concept of giri until that point. The word translates to an English form of 'duty' or 'obligation', but in Japan there is an element of respect that goes with it. Where, in the Western world, you might see these women...
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Managing Projects
2008-02-11 12:24:00
I spent last week painting my bedroom, and realised that even for small, non-career-related projects like this, I still use the professional project management techniques I've learned over the years. Here are some of my top tips:- Have a plan and revisit it. Before you start any work, think through and document what you need to do, what resources you'll need, when you'll need them, and how you'll get the resources. Consider where you're likely to run into problems and how you'll deal them with them. Refer to your plan on a daily or weekly basis so that you can cross off any finished items (very satisfying) and to keep smaller or less obvious activities from falling through the cracks.- Be realistic in your planning. Plan out your best, realistic, and worst case scenarios. While it's always good to try to achieve the best case scenario, it's not the one you should pitch to your stakeholders. - Respect the Time-Quality-Cost triangle. In most projects, time, quality, and cost a...
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Do You Think In Pictures?
2008-02-08 19:40:00
I'm one of those people that, when I'm talking, likes to have a piece of paper and pen in front of me so that I can draw diagrams, charts, and pictures to go along with my narrative. Same thing for PowerPoint presentations - the fewer words and the more pictures on the slides, the better.If you're also one of those people who thinks in pictures rather than in words, or one of those people who needs help communicating with people like us, check out the following blog, which provides the answer to just about everything in humorous, graphical form:http://indexed.blogspot.com
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Eating Alone on the Road
2008-02-05 08:47:00
In yesterday's Financial Times, a management consultant who was tired of ordering room service for dinner asked the 'Global Traveller' columnist for advice on eating alone when working away from home. While the answer provided some good tips, as someone who has regularly eaten alone on the road, I think they missed a few:- Eat at restaurants outside of 'peak' dining times. When restaurants are quiet, they don't mind serving tables of one and the wait staff are usually quite attentive.- Eat at the bar/counter. Many pubs and diners will have a 'counter service' that works well for single diners, and again, the bartender/wait staff will usually make small talk with you.- Order in or get take away from local establishments. The staff at the hotel can usually recommend their favourites.- Invite someone from the client-side out for a bite. It's great for building relationships, and they usually have a favourite place you might not otherwise find.
More About: Road , On The Road , Eating , The Road

Stress Down Day
2008-01-31 11:49:00
Since stress levels in the workplace have been rising considerably over the years, tomorrow has been declared 'Stress Down Day' here in the UK. Some tips to help you be less stressful at work:- Be purposeful. If you have clearly defined goals and objectives, it will help you to prioritise tasks and time, making it easier for you to say 'yes' or 'no' to requests and to delegate activities. It can also help you to come to terms with less pleasant aspects of your work if you can focus on the fact that it's helping you get to a more desirable point.- Switch your email off. Check your email when you get in, and check it before you leave. Switch it off for the rest of the day. Don't be a slave to your inbox - the less email you send, the less you'll receive. (You can try this with your mobile phone, too.)- Take a lunch break. So many people spend lunch time at their desk. Even if you've brought your lunch from home, get out of the office at lunch time, get a breath of fresh air,...

A New Life in Argentina
2008-01-29 15:09:00
A friend of mine has decided to leave her consulting career and life in the UK to move to Argentina . She agreed to share her story on this blog. I hope you'll be inspired by her move, and will join me in giving her a big "thank you and good luck!". “So, you’re giving up your career!” That was my aunt’s response to the news that I was leaving my job as a management consultant in London to go and work for an NGO in Buenos Aires, Argentina. My (now ex) colleagues were somewhat more positive, generally professing to be “very jealous” and congratulating me for “pursuing my dream”.Actually, I wouldn’t view my decision in either of those terms.When I took a sabbatical last year, it was because I was starting to feel unfulfilled at work, and, consequently, starting to resent the demands that the job made on every aspect of life. My firm was good enough to grant me some time off (a positive aspect of working in consultancy), and I was lucky enough to have some savings av...
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FT: LBS MBA is #2
2008-01-28 21:45:00
The Financial Times released its annual ranking of MBA programmes around the world. My alma mater, London Business School, was ranked second, finishing only behind U Penn: Wharton in the USA.Congratulations to LBS for achieving the highest-ever ranking for a European school!

Going Somewhere? Walkit!
2008-01-24 21:31:00
As a consultant, I spend a lot of time bouncing between meetings and appointments. With a (usually) reliable public transport system in London, I often take the Tube even though I love to walk because I assume it will save me time. That may not be the case, and now there's a new website - walkit.com - that helps you find out if walking could be your best option.If you type in where you are and where you want to go, the site provides you with a route, walking times, calories burned, and CO2 emissions saved. Ladies, while it doesn't handicap you for wearing high heels or a tight skirt, it does provide slow, medium, and fast walking times. Most importantly, for anyone who has a tendency to get lost (as I do) the walking instructions contain landmarks as well as street names.So next time you're out and about, try walking it.

Good Customer Service - Ocado
2008-01-23 13:23:00
I regularly order groceries on-line through Ocado and my experiences with them have been fantastic. Yesterday, I had a bit of a blip with them. About an hour before my delivery was to arrive, I received a phone call from the delivery-man, explaining that his van had broken down. A replacement van was expected to arrive at his location shortly, and he was wondering if he could please deliver my groceries an hour-and-a-half later than scheduled. Since I was working from home all day that wasn't a problem, and all went to plan from there. I had forgotten about the event until I logged onto my email this morning. In my inbox was an email from Ocado, apologising for the 'less than perfect' delivery and offering me an incentive to shop with them again. Because the delivery-man had handled things so graciously the day before, I had to honestly stop and think about what had gone wrong with my delivery.While I hadn't complained about yesterday's events, Ocado proactively managed the sit...
More About: Customer Service , Service , Customer , Good

NYC Workshop: Working With Difficult People
2008-01-18 19:47:00
My friend, Alex Yaroslavsky, a conflict resolution expert and founder of the Yaro Group, will be running a workshop on Workin g With Difficult People in New York City on Wednesday 23 January.Click here for details and to register.
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