Kingsford Consulting

03/24/2023

In light of current remote work trends, particularly among knowledge workers, the city needs to create a downtown that serves as the heart of human experience, says Andrew Penny.

04/16/2020

Learning to See
Sawubona is a Zulu greeting which means “I see you”. The idea is that you don't merely acknowledge a person by saying “hi”, but you take a moment (or 5) to look just a little bit beyond what you see on the surface, or maybe a little beyond the assumptions you are making when they reply “good” to your standard “how are you”.

Motivation
So, what has this to do with motivation? – well, it’s foundational. But first, I want to dispel a myth about motivation: it is impossible to motivate someone! Motivation comes only from within. A major responsibility of a leader is to help team members to feel motivated. And so, being able to really see them is a key step to that (for more, see my blog on Not Motivating your Employees.)

A Model of the Mind
To understand how to influence someone’s motivation, it is helpful to have a model of how the mind works. Here is my simplified model of the human mind (it is an assemblage of *several models); we can consider the mind to comprise 3 distinct levels.

Read the full article here: https://www.kingsfordconsulting.ca/blog/i-see-you

04/16/2020

Before you can lead others, you must ‘lead yourself’ – and to do that, you need to be connected with yourself – how you are thinking, acting and feeling. And to help you, we wrote about 6 areas to discuss with that little voice in your head:
1. How am I feeling?
2. What am I focused on?
3. My Opposable Mind
4. Have Courage
5. Where am I going?
6. Who am I?

Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/dApBcdk

04/15/2020

This will be a very practical webinar by my colleague Graham

COVID-19 has created new challenges for all companies many of which are learning how to continue to operate with remote workers.

This focuses on supporting remote-working manager-leaders.

Firstly, we’ll explore self-leadership, then how to lead the virtual team, finally we’ll consider the post COVID-19 world where ongoing remote working may offer benefits for companies and individuals. This is about people, not technology.

Graham Birkenhead is Kingsford Consulting's people, process and organization expert. He started his career as a military engineer in the UK where he developed expertise in the leadership of change, and organizational knowledge and culture.

He brings an eclectic mix of engineering, management and consultancy skills built over 30 years of field experience. He uses these skills to support and coach our clients in the implementation of the plans and changes required for growth.


Join us on April 21 at 11:00 am for our webinar on "Leading a virtual team". Register here: https://bit.ly/3aiaaEw

03/23/2020

COVID-19 has changed the world we once knew. But we are adapting – this is what we humans are good at and what made us the dominant species. Don’t worry, we will quickly learn how to live with this strange new world, and how to make it our new normal in order to get on with life and with business.

So now, we are all Social Distancing. People are being asked to work from home – indeed, the Kingsford team are now fully working from our homes. Where possible, it’s the right thing to do. Certainly, there are challenges - but there are many solutions.

Read the full article here:https://www.kingsfordconsulting.ca/blog/leading-the-home-team

03/11/2020

Best in the World is a concept we've been working on for about 5 years. We wondered why some companies were extremely successful, expanded steadily and survived competitive approaches while others fizzled out. Many of the fizzlers were well established mid-market companies.

All this is happening in a rapidly globalizing world. We all know this, but the change is complex and each change begets thousands more. It is so much easier for businesses to serve clients around their country and around the world. Payment systems, communications technology, logistics management systems and so on have made ‘going global’ a no brainer.

Most ambitious companies see this as a great opportunity. The problem is that ambitious companies everywhere in the world see it as an opportunity. This means that your business is now competing with just about everyone in the world. You now have to think like an Olympian. You won the state championship, you made it to the national team, you competed in some international events and now - it’s the Olympic games. You are competing with every other athlete in the world. There is only one athlete in each sport who is best in the world – a gold medalist. As with your business you are competing against every other company in the world in your segment. You win or you don’t.

At the start of the modern Olympic games, when it was very much an amateur event, athletes would often compete in multiple sports. Today with the intense competition and need to specialize, that is almost unheard of. The same is true with companies - the specialist thrives.

We have seen many mid-size companies moving into a killing zone where they're moderately good at a wide range of things in their segment but not gold medal quality. There are many high-profile retail examples that illustrate this very well. But there are many more smaller, lower profile companies that suffer the same fate. They are destroyed by competitors who come into their market with a laser focus on small slices of their business and then chew away at their clients and their revenues.

To read the full story (no sign in required) please visit our blog page: https://www.kingsfordconsulting.ca/blog/best-in-the-world

03/05/2020

Download our FREE e-book: 'The Six Month Revenue Improvement Plan'

This book is written for CEOs and business owners who want to quickly increase revenues. Most people think that increasing your revenue is really hard work. It’s not. The hard part is thinking differently and changing behaviour – yours and that of your team.

The following pages provide easy ideas that your company can implement tomorrow that will undoubtedly increase revenues. They cover pricing, sales negotiation, prospecting, networking, metrics and management.

We suggest you introduce one of these, each month, for the next six months.

Implementing these ideas will instill a sense of action and energy into your business which will, in turn, create a culture of growth.

Click here to download: https://mailchi.mp/kingsfordconsulting.ca/revenue-improving-program

02/06/2020

There is nothing quite like wrapping yourself in a nice warm towel after stepping out of a long hot shower. It feels so good that I am surprised that towel warmers are not a standard fixture in bathrooms everywhere. They are, in fact, a rather scarce niche product. You might think that this subset of the population that indulges in the luxury of towel warmers would be a nice tight niche market with buyers everywhere conforming to the same profile.

But it is far from it.

In the North East US where homes are older, and poorly insulated, bathrooms are cold so a towel warmer is bought as a space heater – with a warm towel as a bonus. In the humid South East US, towel warmers are used to dry towels to avoid that stinky smell. In California, towel warmers, along with bidets, are all about the bling! Hey – check out my sweet bathroom man... (BTW If you would like a really nice towel warmer, visit our friends at ICO Bath here).

So, even though you have a product that sells well in one geography, you would be foolhardy to think the next geography can be won with a simple a copy & paste approach.

Selling to the same type of client in a new location sounds straightforward, but before you launch, here are five things to think about:

To read the full story (no sign in required) please visit our blog page: https://www.kingsfordconsulting.ca/blog/hot-towels--new-markets

Thanks for reading and thanks for sharing.

07/29/2019

Climate Change has been upgraded to the Climate Crisis. We are experiencing a significant increase in extreme weather events: heat waves and droughts, rain and flooding, hurricanes and storms. Rising sea levels are creating climate refugees. Louisiana will lose 4,000 square miles over the next 50 years. Around the world, populations are demanding change and governments are legislating. The construction industry will be impacted.

Have a look at various factors that are shaping the construction industry: https://mailchi.mp/kingsfordconsulting/construction_paper

07/27/2019

Around the world, 200,000 people are moving towards the town or city every day. They all need housing that they can afford, and they want social, transportation and utility infrastructure.

Read our latest findings in the construction industry: https://mailchi.mp/kingsfordconsulting/construction_paper

07/25/2019

Today, all markets are more open and intense as competition is increasingly less constrained by geographic boundaries. Companies have to become increasingly agile to respond to a wider range of needs and wants.

Find out more about how this is impacting the construction industry here: https://mailchi.mp/kingsfordconsulting/construction_paper