I was recently at a networking meeting and met a really nice woman.

Consumers want companies to have socially and environmentally responsible management and are prepared to pay higher prices for it.

There is no escaping the fact that the financial services industry is facing some major changes.

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The call for leadership has been heard often over the past year, resonating in messages of economic crisis, presidential campaigns and an optimism of change.

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We were just leaving a restaurant when we were stopped by an old friend and her husband who were taking the evening sun with a group of friends on the embankment by the river.

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Being environmentally aware is no longer an optional extra.

According to the OECD, the healthcare market makes up an average of 10% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of Europe and is thus a key component of its economies – and demand will rise as the population ages.

The vast majority (85 percent) of corporate executives say they need to overhaul their approach to risk-management if the lessons of the economic crisis are to be used to improve business results, according to results of a recent Accenture. Accenture’s 2009 Global Risk Management Study, based on a survey of 260 chief financial officers, chief risk officers and other executives with risk-management responsibilities at large companies in 21 countries, also found that 40 percent of respondents said that their companies already have increased or will increase their investments in broader risk-management capabilities in the next six months.

It shows that even in the early stages of the credit crisis, many businesses quickly realised that their finance functions had to improve their ability to challenge and support the business.

Hitachi Consulting, the global business and IT consulting of Hitachi Ltd, is an undoubtedly ambitious company.

The opposite of work is not play.

As pressure mounts on the boards of major companies to reduce costs, streamline operations and maintain shareholder value in the face of recession, CIOs and CFOs find themselves in a difficult position.

The saying goes you can’t please all the people all of the time.

This consumer faith crisis, triggered by loss of confidence in the financial sector, has strengthened distrust in brands across other sectors like energy supply where brands are perceived to be passing on costs to consumers through unprecedented tariff rises. It’s clear that brands, particularly in these sectors, need a recovery strategy in place before plummeting trust causes irreparable damage.

Your elevator speech is a verbal business card or billboard.

Last year BA reported a sharp rise of operating profit to £883 million, which in view of the rising fuel price and their falling market share, seemed to be bucking the downward global trend.

The impact of the global financial crisis on the truck and bus industry has been profound.

What makes the difference between an average presentation and one that rocks your world? What makes the difference between a memorable speech and one that fades into oblivion as soon as the presenter steps off the stage? The answer sits in four building blocks that are essential for crafting a speech into a work of art rather than hum-drum blather. Building Block Number One: Add context to your content. Every word we utter, every gesture we make take its nuance and meaning from the context of the moment.

"You either have to be first, best, or different." I found this quote on a quote board so I don't know what country music singer Loretta Lynn was referring to when she said it, but it seemed a perfect summation of what your business must be when you're starting out. Being first is optimal If you've planned carefully you can flood the market with your product or service immediately after opening and your business has a low barrier to entry.

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How to score an own goal • I was asked by a client to audit the phone bills, we found expensive calls to premium line numbers.

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One of Carl Jung's favorite words was "synchronicity", that unexplainable convergence of unplanned events which offer insights and opportunities.

Train travel in the UK is a stressful experience, but in some parts of the country it would be much worse had it not been for a ten month IT strategy management assignment under taken by Bill Reeves, one of the interim managers on Impact Executives' books. He is a senior executive with an engineering background who had worked for some of the best-known firms in the country before deciding to take up interim management.

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Outsourcing is about taking something that isn’t your organisation’s core competence and getting a specialist to run it more efficiently.

It is likely that at some point in a senior manager’s career they will be faced with the prospect of leading during challenging times.

40% of CEOs fail within the first 18 months (HBR, 2005).

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The world has changed.

Summary From the outside, management consultants are often seen as key mediators in the flow of management ideas.

We recently watched the Welsh National Opera in Donizetti’s Elixir of Love.

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Lastminute.com founder Brent Hoberman described it as "a fascinating zeitgeist tool.

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As with most complex problems, the solution to planning and executing strategy lies in creating a practical, step-by-step methodology that breaks the problem into manageable components to be addressed in a logical sequence.