Published at www.smartcompany.com.au as Digital Bottom Line

Insight on Insight

By brendan at 19 December, 2011, 9:02 pm

Have you ever noticed that Entrepreneurs never put an “Out of Office Message” on their email? John Stokes said this to me whilst we were having lunch at the soon to be demolished Rosati’s in Flinders Lane. John is a British Entrepreneur and Venture Capitalist based in Montreal, Canada, where he runs a US$50M fund [...]

Can you have a partnership of entrepreneurs?

By brendan at 13 December, 2011, 9:16 pm

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. They had a local office above a shop in the fashionable shopping district around the Bond Street tube station and were a fascinating group, who seem to have built a [...]

how to moderate an event

By brendan at 5 December, 2011, 5:13 pm

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. Although I believe I have nothing on Narelle Kennedy of the Australian Business Foundation, who is by far [...]

mini diasporas & linkedin

By brendan at 25 November, 2011, 4:56 pm

I read a nice article in The Economist last week, it was entitled “The Magic of Diasporas”. And since I was in London going to and “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 [...]

communicating modes

By brendan at 7 November, 2011, 12:42 pm

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. And it was while looking over this view and drinking wine on a hot day recently, that I had a major insight into management [...]

natural ceilings

By brendan at 7 November, 2011, 12:10 pm

An odd thing I noticed a long time ago when I was I 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. I accepted this as I assumed that as a young Lieutenant, I was forever mucking things [...]

The 10 Principles of War

By brendan at 7 November, 2011, 11:56 am

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 [...]

calendars for international travel

By brendan at 24 October, 2011, 12:17 pm

From my point of view, doing international business is one of the most enjoyable things you can do in a business career. And if you are going to spend around 90,000 hours of your life working, why not have fun. I said this to someone during the week as I am planning a trip in [...]

killer boards for small businesses

By brendan at 17 October, 2011, 12:51 pm

A fairly interesting and painful lesson to learn was having my father as Chairman of one of my IT businesses. I hadn’t ever had a formal board before, and my father was experienced as a chairman of public companies. So as CEO I decided the other founders and I, who were the Directors, should meet [...]

success, failure and the space in-between

By brendan at 11 October, 2011, 11:38 am

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 signoff at every level and was ready to transition into the new leadership role that came with her plan. Unfortunately they (the evil bosses) took her plan, but replaced [...]