Julian’s Business Tips

  Six months ago, a local trader did some work for me, and we talked about another three projects I wanted to put their way. It was left that they would contact me when they had more time. But I never heard from them again. How does that make me feel? I feel that they […]

  It’s that time of year again where everyone seems to have a cold, and it can be hard to manage your business needs when staff are poorly. Is it OK for you to contact people when they are ‘off sick’? Can you ring them to ask if they will be back tomorrow – or

As I sipped my morning cuppa, I wondered what I would share with you this month. But then a sport item caught my attention, and I knew! The America’s Cup is an international sailing race where the British entry is in the final for the first time in 173 years. These boats are incredibly sophisticated

Kier Starmer is trying to lead the country, whilst the Conservatives are electing a leader to unite their fractured membership. Meanwhile, in America, Donald and Kamala are fighting for the right to lead their divided country. In all these cases, the leader’s responsibility is to bring together a disparate group of people, unite them with

Most doctors work at several different hospitals to gain experience, although they can only move to a new hospital, when another doctor leaves – so they all need to move at the same time. August is the biggest rotation of the year, and this week, my team and I trained 256 new doctors how to

Unless you’re the manager! A group of talented individuals can only produce the best team performance if it is well managed. How are you managing your talented individuals? With the Olympics in full swing, and the memory of England’s success at the Euros fresh in our minds, I thought I’d talk about teams again. A

Julian’s Business Tips by Julian Berry… I was going to write something about the election this month, but I couldn’t think where to start! I could look at the different parties’ approach to business, I could speculate on the likely outcome – but I felt we would all be heartily sick of hearing all that by

To make progress, we need to set targets, goals, and objectives – call them whatever you like – but to be effective, they should be SMART. Let’s work through the SMART acronym (there are some slight variations in the meanings, but they all end up in the same place). I’m going to use a non-business

I was in a meeting today with some senior directors talking about future digital strategies. One of the directors surprised the whole room, when they said, ‘We need to do less…’ Well, that was unusual! I’ve always understood that if you’re not moving forward, then you’re actually going backwards in a digital world. But then

I’m writing this as Mollie King, radio presenter and former pop star, is finishing an amazing 500km cycle ride across the UK, raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for Comic Relief. You will be reading this in the April edition of The Listing, the month that hosts the London Marathon – a similar challenge where

As I watched a gritter on my icy journey to work last week, I was reminded that just as an icy road can be treacherous with unseen black ice to catch out the unwary, so the road to success also has hazards to spoil the progress of the inexperienced traveller! In life as in business,

You may have heard the phrase, ‘As a business owner, if you want to grow your business, you need to spend time working on it instead of just working in it’. But what does that mean – how do I know whether what I’m doing is right? Working ON your business involves long-term tasks like