You may know that we work closely with a UK Gift Trade publication called Gift Focus Magazine where we have regular features on our current and upcoming products and campaigns.

One other thing we do is for Neil to write an Answer to the Questions that are posed to the magazine in the area of People related topics ...

You can see more about Gift Focus on their website and you can download their latest magazine by Gift Focus Magazine.

Our most recent Answer is here ...

Q:  Our business is not growing ... how can I drive the company and my team to change, improve and grow?


A.  We are all busy at work. We go to work every day and work hard, tick off the ‘to-do’ list and yet we rarely seem to grow, change or improve.

How we ensure we start working ‘on’ our business, rather than ‘in’ it, is a key step to this success.

We need to create the time to FOCUS on how we can improve. What do we want to achieve and by when? How can we work on the things that move us in the right direction rather than simply maintaining the status quo?

Here are 5 steps to help you change what you are doing …

F   Future ... find the time to stop what you are doing and focus on the future. What is your vision of success?  What do you want to achieve?
O   Opportunities … look for these everywhere. Have a critical look at your business through your own, your customers’ and your competition’s eyes.
C   Challenge everything you do.  Does it really add value?  Set some realistic goals as well as some challenging stretch targets for your business.
U   Understand the possible barriers to your success and work on how you can overcome them.

S   Start with a path of where you want to be in 12 months and work backwards each quarter or month to see where you need to be at each stage.

If you don’t stop to look at your business every now and again, you may suddently find someone else is doing it better or cheaper. Give your business the FOCUS it needs to be ahead of the rest.