Leadership | The Portfolio Partnership

Managing Your Direct Reports

by Ian Smith | Nov 15, 2012 | Management

Sometimes it pays to keep things really simple. Keeping people focused on the right stuff, keeping people continually effective and motivated is never easy. However I’m observing 3 basic problems with leadership styles as I dive deep into the operational...

Positioning – Can we learn from Barnes & Noble?

by Ian Smith | Sep 2, 2011 | Positioning drives growth

In March this year Time published a smart article called – E-Books: Why Barnes & Noble Avoided Borders’ Fate by Josh Sanburn. With the announcement of Barnes & Nobles’ (B&N) latest results for Q1 ending July showing the Nook business soaring 140%...

Creating Agility By Redefining Roles

by Ian Smith | Aug 5, 2011 | Talent Management

Warning this is a tough love post. The Backstory The United States should be a landscape of small agile, innovative, smartly organized enterprises, fit for worldwide competition.Well the numbers certainly back up that landscape – 99.6% of the 27.3m US...

The Surprising Value of Being the Best in the World

by Ian Smith | Apr 15, 2011 | Being the Best, Compelling Stories, Exiting your business, Management Help, Repositioning

“Our culture celebrates superstars. We reward the product or the song or the organization or the employee that is number one. The rewards are heavily skewed , so much so that it’s typical for #1 to get ten times the benefit of #10, and a hundred times the...

Managing a business in 2010 – What’s changed? – Part 3

by Ian Smith | Apr 13, 2010 | Communication, Compelling Stories, Management Help, Mentoring, Performance Profiles. Execution, Recruitment, Strategy

In the final part of this three part review of what has changed from 2006 and 2010, I’ve noted some thoughts on Staff Motivation and Engagement. This post was motivated by a great little book, Top Talent by Sylvia Ann Hewlett (one of the founders of The Hidden Brain...