business transformation

If you had to create a list of the companies you’d like to work for – how would you go about assessing which ones would be the best fit for you? 

The problem with things like the Best Place to Work surveys is that they tend to look at tick box criteria: how well people are paid, their benefits, training budgets, if they comply with employment legislation etc. What they don’t capture are the more important things that are harder to measure, like whether someone’s work is intrinsically interesting or meaningful.

So, you are into e-commerce & struggle to keep up with Amazon (which boasts the #1 app among Millennials and Centennials and made over $ 43 billion in Q3 2017)? Don’t worry, your competitors face exactly the same problems – and turn to Artificial Intelligence to solve them. Discover how using e-commerce AI solutions can help you deliver the ultimate shopping experience, reduce operating and staffing costs and boost revenue.

Digital evolution is an ongoing journey for every business.

Gone are the days of saying that you have ‘done’ digital after a major technology overhaul. Instead, it is an evolution to transition and optimise your business continually. Even digitally native companies know that they have to innovate and stay ahead of the game because of growing disruption and rapid technological change.

Most digital transformation strategies are neither strategic nor transformational.

Michael Porter, the famous Harvard Strategy Professor said “If we’re satisfied with vague strengths and weakness lists, we’re not thinking very clearly about strategy”. “There’s a distinction between operational effectiveness and strategic positioning”.

“Should we be on the cloud or have our own servers? That’s an operational effectiveness question.  What we understand is that operational effectiveness is not strategy”.

Season's Greetings from The BTN!

Organisational culture has a clear impact on a business’s ability to meet financial goals and create an impact on their overall market influence. A system of shared values and beliefs will govern how team members behave within your organisation, from how they dress right through to how they perform in their roles.

“Implementing change is the journey, sustaining change is the destination”

I have previously written about personal productivity pointing out that not everything on the ‘to-do list’ has equal impact. I also wrote about planning using your energy levels and briefly touched upon the concept of ‘deep work’.

I think that most people know about these concepts but if knowledge was the only thing we needed, the advice on the internet would have made us all billionaires!

Balcroft has provided operational consulting support to numerous companies across a multitude of sectors and organisations. Whilst we have been extremely successful in achieving the needs of our clients, we have always been faced with a recurring problem within each project. The common theme is the presence of at least one assassin within the organisation.

As change facilitators and leaders, most of us have seen that it’s helpful to have a change plan, and to follow some kind of framework or change model that reminds us of the essentials that will help us to guide the organisation through the change we’re helping to deliver.

And I know from my own experience, and from discussions with my colleagues, that the framework, no matter which one or how diligently followed, is not a guarantee of successful change.