by Jonathan Gifford | Jan 30, 2014 | Business & Leadership
If you are interested, as I am, in how we can drag the organisation out of the old, nineteenth-century, early-industrial structure in which it currently languishes, and create a new kind of organisation that is fit for purpose in the twenty-first century, then...
by Jonathan Gifford | Oct 2, 2013 | Business & Leadership
What are the 5 key characteristics of every great entrepreneur? Or possibly six (see below). Well, I’m afraid that, to quote Monty Python’s Flying Circus, they are arguably “bleedin’ obvious”. The problem is, I did a lot of reading about business leaders when...
by Jonathan Gifford | Jan 13, 2012 | Business & Leadership
The very real animosity that existed for so many years between Apple and Microsoft, both at an organisational level and amongst users, has created a lasting legacy. Either you are an Apple kind of person, or you are a ‘PC’ kind of person. Using one...
by Jonathan Gifford | Mar 30, 2011 | Business & Leadership
In an earlier blog Greg Dyke and John Birt: lessons in leadership I explored the dramatic difference in leadership style between two previous Director Generals of the BBC: John Birt, and his successor, Greg Dyke. I used this case history recently in a morning...
by Jonathan Gifford | Feb 7, 2011 | Business & Leadership
In my blog ‘Gerstner and the IBM turnaround: vision or execution’, I wrote about the life-threatening hole that IBM had got itself into by the early 1990s, before Louis Gerstner was persuaded to take up one of the most challenging Chief Executive roles in the...
by Jonathan Gifford | Oct 11, 2010 | Business & Leadership
A version of this article first appeared in the June 2010 issue of Strategy magazine, with the title What lies beneath? Several leading modern business leaders seem, surprisingly, to downplay the importance of strategy. You can make too much fuss about strategy, they...