Big Ideas Archives - The Management Centre

IDEA value chain – how to embed your innovative idea

What’s the Big Idea? Management guru, Peter Drucker, has written extensively on the value of innovation and the need to avoid ‘the temptation to feed yesterday and starve tomorrow’. Third sector, public sector and even social business often have a false sense of ‘playing safe’ by sticking to what has worked in the past. But, […]

Do you need to influence someone? Get on the same page

What’s the Big Idea? If you want to have a good relationship with your colleagues, managers and leaders at work, the best thing to do is to perform your job well. But there will be times when you need to actively influence someone – to get help or resources, to get buy-in for your ideas, […]

Dana Segal

Dana Segal (MInstF) is a strategist and fundraiser. Having started her career in the arts & cultural sector, she has grown her portfolio to include INGOs, NGOs and other organisations across the UK, Europe and Africa including UNICEF, World Animal Protection, Afrobarometer and Southbank Centre. Dana was one of the inaugural AFP Fundraising Fellows, and […]

Project planning tools

=mc’s new updated version of the systems approach to project management offers you the solution to a range of challenges whether you’re a multi national humanitarian INGO or small art gallery that needs to see every exhibition as a mini-project. Among the organisations who’ve used the =mc Systems Model are: Project working is becoming the […]

Leadership: 5 practices of effective leaders

In any senior manager’s career, the transition from manager to leader can be a tricky one. In any manager’s career, the transition to leader can be tricky. How do you lift yourself up from the operational to the strategic? What are the secrets to providing visionary leadership? How can you inspire and lead change in […]

Leadership: finding your style

Managing a team and maintaining – or even upgrading – their performance is a big, time consuming job, however experienced you are. Supervision sessions, coaching, advice, support all take up big chunks of your time – time away from your ‘own’ work. So the question is, how can you maximise the positive impact you have […]

The Boston Matrix in Fundraising

The Boston Matrix is one of a series of analysis tools that help you decide the effectiveness of your current fundraising portfolio. It is normally used to assess the relative contribution of various fundraising activities or donor clusters at a particular point in time. But the matrix is enormously flexible and can be used to […]

The Influential Fundraiser

Influence… it’s what donors want The world of fundraising is changing. More and more supporters are being turned off by clichéd direct mail packages, their in-boxes are filled to bursting with bland e-newsletters, and they can’t bear to listen to another dull speech over a bad chicken meal at a crowded fundraising gala. Instead supporters […]

Porter’s Five Forces Model in Fundraising

Michael Porter is currently the hottest (and most expensive!) management consultant in the world. He has produced a number of ‘big ideas’. But perhaps his most famous is the Five Forces model. This article will explain it. The Big Idea Michael Porter has produced a number of ‘big ideas’. But perhaps his most famous is […]

Ansoff’s Matrix

The Big Idea Defining strategic direction can be a major challenge for any organisation. Igor Ansoff, US strategy guru, developed a matrix which helps to focus your attention and resources. This matrix, commonly used in commercial settings, has been adapted by =mc to make it relevant to a wide range of not-for-profit organisations. For fundraisers […]

Culture eats strategy for breakfast

Transforming results by changing beliefs and behaviours “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is a famous quote from legendary management consultant and writer Peter Drucker. To be clear he didn’t mean that strategy was unimportant – rather that a powerful and empowering culture was a surer route to organisational success. One of the key goals in […]

Emotional intelligence at work

This article relates to our Emotional Intelligence (EI) training programme. It introduces some key elements of emotional intelligence to help you enhance your performance by being more confident, and in control of your emotional responses to situations in the workplace. What is emotional intelligence? The term Emotional Intelligence (EI) is increasingly well known and often […]

Good to Great

“Good is the enemy of Great” is the opening of one of the most influential books in contemporary management thinking. As an opening it’s pretty arresting – maybe not up there alongside “A spectre is haunting Europe” or “In the beginning was the word” – but nonetheless powerful. And although originally written about businesses, the […]

Strategy Maps and the Balanced Scorecard

An Introduction to Strategy Maps and the BSC in Charities

Synopsis: Organisations need to find a way to express their strategy simply and understandably – but also in a way that reflects the complexity of their relationships and activities. One increasingly popular framework to combine these qualities is the balanced scorecard (BSC), and specifically the more recent incarnation, the strategy map. At its simplest the […]

Does your Big Idea look Red or Blue?

What’s the Big Idea? Blue Ocean Strategy is a radical approach to strategy captured in a book written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne – professors based at INSEAD, the leading European business school. The book summarises the thesis that organisations face two key choices: creating new customer demand in an uncontested market space […]

Behavioural economics: why we think much less than we think we think… and why it’s important

Behavioural economics says we are sometimes rational, but most of the time our rationality is limited by our ability to work things out, the large amount of information available, the limited relevant knowledge we have, and our own lack of time and energy. In these cases – and whether we are deciding on donating to […]

Big Ideas