nickshanagher

Poetry grabs life by the throat, David Adams says near the start of Well Versed , his collection of interconnected essays on the things that modern businesspeople should pay attention to in order to be successful. He borrows the phrase from Robert Frost in part explanation for his journey from accountant to stockbroker to chief executive to business coach. Unlike most business books that sell a single idea or success story, the strength of Adams’ book is its refusal to tell you what to do. “Alice in Through the Looking Glass …reaches a crossroads and doesn’t know which way to go. Looking up she sees the Cheshire Cat grinning. ‘Please sir which way should I go?’ ‘Where do you want to get to?’ asks the cat. ‘I don’t really mind,’ says Alice. ‘Well then it doesn’t really matter which way you go.’ How many businesses and particularly business meetings are conducted with the same ethos?” Adams challenges. Without clear and unequivocal goals businesses will never achieve either what ...

I was passing a branch of Waitrose in London last week and as I glanced through the front door I saw this excellent floral display. How inviting it looked. How many independent retailers can match that? (Vim Odedra is one, having been at his Canvey Island Nisa Local.) But at least, you may say, people will know this is a multiple retailer and they may like a local shop. Not if you proceed to read the marketing on the shop’s windows, which I reproduce in full: “The first Waitrose branch in Gloucester road was opened in 1912. It was part of a small chain of specialist food shops founded eight years earlier by grocers David Taylor, Wallace Waite and Arthur Rose. “After Mr Taylor left the firm in 1906, the remaining two partners combined their surnames to produce the name Waitrose. “The original branch traded for 76 years and was thought of locally as Kensington's village shop. It ran a popular home delivery service and many customers called in every day. “Back in 1...