Even change changes | Paul Kirkbride

Back in 2009, when the dust of the GFC began to settle and its impacts appeared in full view, Paul Kirkbride recognised a transformation in the training and development landscape. Attitudes shifted and companies began to target their change management and training budget more sensibly. (HR Monthly, 1 December 2009)

For each organisation a critical choice arose:

· Continue to manage in the same way, struggling with the same issues and getting the same results.

or

· Step into a completely new way of seeing, thinking, being and leading, offering new possibilities for organisational success.

Moving now to 2011, here is an opportunity to take part in an intensive two day Executive Series program with Paul Kirkbride. Paul will provide you with new knowledge and new thinking on the topic of creating change within your organisation, bringing it into the new year with success.

Paul Kirkbride

Making Change Happens begins February 28. There are still a few places left. Contact Marianne Carollo at the Melbourne Business School for more info +61 3 9349 8292 or m.carollo@mbs.edu 

“It’s not you it’s me.” Ever wondered how to better manage your sponsorship relationship? | Richard Speed

A message from Richard Speed, 

"When the football clubs of Australia announce their new sponsorships for the year, the sponsoring firms explain how proud they are of the association and how central the relationship is to their marketing strategy. I am happy to guarantee, here and now, that by the end of the season, bad behaviour by players, officials or a club as whole will lead to some of those sponsors cutting their ties as fast as possible, leaving their marketing strategy in tatters.

Sponsorships are one of the situations in marketing when you rest the success of your strategy on something outside the firm and outside your direct control. If you manage these relationships like your traditional resources, your risk of failure goes through the roof.


Have you had any experiences like this? Please share them below.

And to learn how to better manage these risks, join me for Hired, borrowed or stolen; Making your marketing strategy work with someone else’s resources, starting March 2nd."

Richard Speed

Richard’s research focuses on creating effective marketing strategy and valuable brands, such as sponsorship and its use in marketing strategy.

Strategy is useless! Unless it can be translated into action... | Graeme Cocks

The book The First XI: Winning Organisations in Australia set out to identify Australian organisations deemed to be high performing or winning over the long term and highlight their underlying causes of success.

Graeme Cocks says 'success was based on broad indicators, such as financial, growth, innovation, productivity and efficiency measures - not just profits. We investigated the winning 11 organisations over a 20-year period and a solid financial performance was a prerequisite through the economic cycles.'

Read more about this book here.

According to Graeme Cocks:

'Strategy formulation is usually regarded as the exclusive domain of senior management because it rewards creativity - the most admired and valued of all intellectual pursuits. It is where managers aspire to be because of the challenges, rewards and influence that it brings. By comparison, effective implementation of strategy rarely gets as much kudos or respect. Yet experienced executives know that the most creative and well crafted visions and strategic plans are useless if they cannot be translated into action.'

To read more on Graeme's 2010 examination of emerging concepts for implementing strategy email us at executiveseries@mbs.edu

Graeme Cocks

And if you'd like to learn how to build your own winning organisation, click here.