When it comes to digital tools, there are many things that remain better done in-person. As a consultant, my professional advice to clients is to keep creative activities like strategy development, ideation and journey mapping as in-person as possible.
The ranking goes:
- In-person
- Digital
- Hybrid
With the pandemonium of 2020, distancing requirements meant option 1 was no longer an option (nor, thankfully, was #3).
There are a lot of digital tools that can be used to bring people together to collaborate on ideas. Your organisation may have a subscription to Microsoft Office365 or Google’s Gsuite, both of which contain tools…
What we say matters. Our words have meaning. Let’s say what we mean and mean what we say.
When leading the delivery of innovation and transformation we are asking people to change what they do. We are asking our people to overcome sometimes decades of habit and begin to build new behaviours from scratch. It is no small task for us and it is no small ask of our people.
As facilitators, one of the things I enjoy most about the work we do with our clients is collaborating with people who show their passion for serving their end users.
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Despite countless attempts to dethrone and dishevel the Double Diamond, this framework for design thinking has withstood the test of time. This article is an introduction to the framework that unlocks Design Thinking.
What is the Double Diamond?
The Double Diamond is a visual framework for understanding the 4 stages of Design Thinking. The ‘diamond’ shape is used to convey whether a stage requires a divergent (open, exploratory) or convergent (narrowing, decisive) approach. The 4 stages form 2 pairs of divergent and convergent thinking, with each pair creating a diamond shape, thus the Double Diamond.
Each design challenge begins with a catalyst. This catalyst may…
They call it churn. It is the measure of the percentage of customers who stop buying a firm’s products or services over a given period of time. The higher the churn, the sooner your customers quit.
High churn is a problem because customer acquisition costs are generally higher than customer retention costs. Basically, it costs most businesses more to convince a person to buy from them for the first time than it costs to get that same person to buy from them again.
Customer loyalty is the discipline of retaining customers, ensuring repeat purchase and extending the lifetime value of…
September 2008:
- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken into conservatorship by the US Federal Government
- Lehmann Brothers fell into bankruptcy
- The US Federal Reserve took over AIG
- Washington Mutual became bankrupt after a run on the bank
- The US Congress passed the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a US$700,000,000,000 bailout fund for the purchase or insurance of troubled assets
- Searches for the term ‘Moral Hazard’ reached an all time world wide high
Every year in June, former university students shield their eyes as their student debt increases in a process known as indexation. Government issued Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) loans track the Consumer Price Index and are intended to keep pace with inflation in order to ensure your student debt maintain its real value.
HECS (pronounced ‘hex’) can feel like a curse for many graduates shackled with debt. When the pandemic pushed inflation negative to -1.9% in the April-June quarter of 2020, one of the few silver-linings of COVID-19 was the prospect of student debt relief. [1][2]
HECS has gone…
Facebook has brought back policy changes that outraged privacy advocates. This time with illustrations.
The same changes were originally deployed on users in January as a ‘take it or leave Whatsapp’ ultimatum. That is still the case, Facebook is still implementing the same policy changes and users are still facing the choice of accepting the changes or leaving Whatsapp.
It is 5 months later and there are now some illustrations. Facebook is hoping this is enough for the majority of users to click through and accept the changes.
A ‘fiscal cliff’ occurs when there is a major drop in government spending, such as through the removal or ending of a spending programme.
In broad strokes, there are two main instruments for governments to stimulate their economies. These are monetary policy and fiscal policy.
If you live in a developed democratic country, fiscal policy is the way your elected government levies taxes and spends on programmes. During an economic crisis, your government may implement temporary or short run programmes to help stimulate economic activity to compensate for the lack of spending by people and businesess.
In response to the…
Choosing the right accounting software to support your startup or small business is hard. Switching if you make the wrong choice is costly. In this match up we pit Quickbooks vs Xero to see which accounting tool will let you stop worrying about accounting tools and get back to running your business.
Cloud-based accounting tools allow you to have a real time view on how your business is performing, collaborate with your accountant or bookkeeper and stay up to date with your tax obligations. …
New Year’s Resolutions don’t stick. Make a New Year’s Regret instead.
While we often start our year’s with well intentioned hopeful ambitions, those good intentions are quickly consumed by every day life. Various estimates put our new year’s resolutions failure rate at >80%.
A better approach may be to name your regrets from the past year. Humans are pain avoidant creatures and regrets are psychologically painful for us.
Consider what actions/inactions you regret from the last year. Use these regrets to motivate your choices going forward. What might you do to avoid furthering these regrets?
How to make a new year’s regret
- Identify your genuine regret/s. The…
Mike Stevenson
MD at The Healthy Organisation. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikestevensonmba/
