SAXTON | people | connecting and communicating

The case for window shopping

Mergers and acquisitions are exciting stuff. This is the sexy end of the growth equation. It’s all about structures and strategies, and trying to rearrange the mix so that one plus one equals three. If you like strategic board games, you’ll love this.

It’s not just good for everyone else

Collaboration gets a lot of traction in management commentary. Wherever your look, we are encouraged to form alliances. Even Harvard Business Review recently devoted an entire issue to it. Everyone, it seems, wants to work together.

Teamwork, as collaboration was once known, has always been a key to success. What has shifted is the preparedness for greater collaboration across traditional boundaries.

Help people get on with it.

Here’s a quote from management professor, Henry Mintzberg: “The manager does not leave the telephone, the meeting, or the email to get back to work. These contacts are the work.”

Most managers will relate to that. On the one hand, the flow of interruptions, requests and enquiries is a source of constant frustration. On the other, constant communication is at the center of successfully running any team or any business.

Time to get off?

Because I spent over 35 years in financial markets, people often ask me about stock markets. What can I tell you? Here's the truth: I have absolutely no idea where markets will end up this year.

I can give you some probabilities. I can name some stocks that might outperform. I could make some fairly reliable dividend forecasts. I can probably identify some stocks that are undervalued, relative to the market.