Business news, business advice and information for Australian SMEs | SmartCompany

Why I ignore your emails

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis ) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

This article first appeared July 27, 2011.

Everyday I receive around 100 emails to my newsletter mailbox. I sign up for anything that takes my fancy, but mostly around technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, but occasionally around personal interests such as kayaking and food. At the end of the workday, I browse the newsletter mailbox fairly quickly, to see if anything that has come in interests me.

Having insight into insight

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Have you ever noticed that entrepreneurs never put an “out of office message” on their email?

The value of entrepreneurial partnerships

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:46:45 +0000

A group of Scandinavian entrepreneurs caught my eye this year. So when I was in London the other week, I decided to look them up, as they have a local office above a shop in the fashionable shopping area around the Bond Street tube station. They were a fascinating group, who seem to have built a working partnership model for entrepreneurial endeavours.

How to be a successful moderator

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:00:00 +0000

I have probably moderated around 100+ events for the Churchill Club over the last couple of years, and have realised that I now have a bit of experience moderating panels, which can be hard to come by.

Diasporas and LinkedIn

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

I read a nice article in The Economist last week entitled “The Magic of Diasporas”. And since I was in London going to an "Australian Business UK" function, it made me feel even more connected to my fellow Aussies. Diasporas are described by Wikipedia as “the movement, migration or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland”.

How do you communicate with your staff?

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

A friend of mine has a beautiful house outside of Geelong. It sits on an acre, has an orchard and chooks in the backyard and started off life as a church. It was while looking out at this view and drinking wine on a hot day recently, that I had a major insight into management issues.

The principles of war

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:14:47 +0000

Around the start of my career in the late 80's, Eastern thought was very big in the workplace. There was a growing awareness of Japanese solutions such as Kanban and Keiretsu. Management books such as Miyamoto Musashi's – The Book of 5 Rings and Sun Tzu's The Art of War were massively popular as books on strategy.

Natural ceilings for bad management

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 23:51:58 +0000

An odd thing I noticed a long time ago when I was in the Army was that most of the Lieutenant Colonels I met used to give me a really bad time, and were unpleasant to work with.

How to undermine governance in four steps

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis ) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year, I stepped down from a board role in a not-for-profit environment. I felt that the board had a very strong CEO at the table combined with a weak chair, and in my opinion, under the guise of good process, we were slowly winding our way to hell. I came to the conclusion that I couldn't change anything and the demands on my time was too great to simply "waste" time in an environment where I was ineffective, so I stood down.

Calendars for international travellers

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 22:45:02 +0000

From my point of view, doing international business is one of the most enjoyable things you can do during your career. And if you are going to spend around 90,000 hours of your life working, why not have fun?

Killer boards for small businesses

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:00:00 +0000

I hadn't ever had a formal board before, and my father was experienced as a chairman of public companies.

Success, failure and the space in between

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 21:35:40 +0000

I had a coffee with a friend yesterday that got shafted at work. She had been working on an exciting new agenda for some months, got sign-off at every level and was ready to transition into the new leadership role that came with her plan.

Sales, marketing, processes and lemmings

jthomson@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 05:18:48 +0000

A popular misconception about lemmings is that once and a while they all suddenly run off a cliff to commit suicide.

Spotting fools and liars

jthomson@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 23:25:48 +0000

I can’t stand dealing with fools and charlatans. It drives me mad. The only resource I have that’s finite is my time and I will never get back every second wasted with idiots and liars.

Five tips to creating new habits

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:20:27 +0000

I used to have an employee called Tim, who would dash over to a customer's site the moment they had a problem and fix it for them. Great customer service!

Revenue model innovation for services companies

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:00:00 +0000

I have been buying and selling services for around 20 years, and during most of that period, have only ever seen two pricing models – fixed rate or hourly rate. Each with a couple of tweaks that are normally of benefit to the supplier, not the purchaser.

Tweaking break-even points for fun and profit

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:00:00 +0000

The difference between a good business and a great business is normally just a tweak or two.

Having fun going global

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Everyone wants you to "go global" if you are not already "born global".

Competing with lower prices is stupid

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:00:00 +0000

The other week I said, “Cutting costs and only competing on price is a death spiral. Always has been, always will be.” I then got asked why a couple of times, so I thought I might expand on this point a bit.

Privacy and sausages

ekrieger@smartcompany.com.au (Brendan Lewis) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Saturday afternoon I made some sausages with a mate – pork and fennel, chicken with Tuscan seasoning and lamb with rosemary and honey. And as always when we finish making the sausages, we BBQ them up for our families. Delicious. If you make your own sausages, you will never eat supermarket sausages again. And on this particular evening we had a slightly disturbing discussion, not around the sausages, but around privacy and the internet.