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Nigel Barlow soundbites

If you’re looking for sound bites, phrases Nigel might use in his speaking and consultancy work, here are a selection.

Nigel Barlow on...

Differentiation

“Most organizations claim to be differentiating themselves – but in exactly the same way as their competitors! A blinding glimpse of the obvious: to truly differentiate you need the courage to be . . . different!”

Thinking

“One month in a job and you go blind. It takes a big re-think to see your role, team, or organization with a fresh eye.”

“Thinking as unusual is the only way to stand out from the crowd.”

“Our best ideas come to us in the gaps between one activity and another, in the silence between two thoughts and the free-flowing state between waking and sleeping. We must learn to Mind The Gap!”

CustomersMenu

“Treat customers exactly as you would want to be treated yourself. Right!? Wrong! Touch into the uniqueness and individuality of each customer – they are mostly not like you – and then you are on the right track to really understanding them.”

“Listen to customers. Right!? Wrong! If you want to create something fresh and innovative, you have to imagine, “what is it the customer doesn’t know that they want but when they see it they will say ‘yes’.” Otherwise you’re running fast to catch up with yesterday’s needs.

“Customer satisfaction is dead. Mostly satisfied customers don’t stay loyal, sing your praises, or refer others to you. The only goal worth aiming for is to become Legendary For Service.”

MarketsMenu

“Markets may appear fragmented, but they are ultimately singular. A market never bought anything, people do. Remember this in all your dealings and you will be well on the way to reaching people with your message.”

“The marketplace is a rumour mill: 24/7/365 people are telling stories about you. If the sum total of these stories is positive, you are legendary. If not, you are either forgettable or notorious !”

LoyaltyMenu

“Organizations like to think that customers are loyal, but they – that is you and me – are inherently fickle and disloyal. Start with treating your customers with loyalty if you want their loyalty in return.”

ClichésMenu

“Forget ‘thinking outside the box’ – change the box if you want to be genuinely innovative.”

“I now have it in my speaking contract that if my client says ‘People are our greatest resource’ – without proof – then I am allowed to leave the room and scream.”

“You can recognize a consultant because they will use the words, ‘sharing’, ‘issues around’, and ‘behaviours’ in the first five minutes of a meeting. To be pedantic, behaviour is a plural: there are no behaviours!”

The FutureMenu

“The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living is the title of a work by artist Damien Hirst. It neatly encapsulates the difficulty of thinking about the future: our current self who is trying to imagine the future will be dead.”

“The people who are the most wrong about the future are the experts. To really see what’s coming next we need to make our minds a tabula rasa. I call it ‘beginner’s mind’.”

“Write the future as a story and you have more chance of making it happen than any number of vision, mission, or strategy documents.”

Creativity and InnovationMenu

“There are two types of creativity. Type 1, which means improving what already exists, and Type 2, which is inventing new products, processes, and ways of thinking.”

“Innovation means, literally, ‘newness’. But different doesn’t always mean better.”

“We are all either critics or creators. There’s no middle ground. Which are you today?”

“To be a creative re-thinker – of your life or business – your first reflex has to be ‘why not?’ or ‘what if?’ – not ‘yes, but’.”

TalentMenu

“There’s no ‘war’ for talent. It’s all around you – the most important talent in business today is to be able to recognise and cultivate talent.”

BrandsMenu

“Most brands are bland. What does yours really stand for that is unique?”

“Brands become real when the penny drops that everyone in your business is the brand – in every connection with customers, potential customers, or the marketplace at large.”

“Good at coming up with ideas, but bad at implementing them? This is what most managers say about their organization, but if the ideas were exciting and fresh enough in the first place it wouldn’t be so big a problem. It’s hard to implement anything you don’t have a passion for.”

“People are not resources to organizations. Organizations are most effective when they are a resource to their people and their customers, creating the climate where people can reach their highest aspirations.”

“Your business is a hologram! When you smash a holographic image you rebuild the whole picture from every tiny part. Similarly, everyone – shareholders, the market, customers – builds their own picture of your whole business from one small splinter of knowledge. This should make you sweat if you really get it!”

LeadershipMenu

“The leader’s number one blind spot is this: we over-estimate the power of what we say and under-estimate the power of what we do. End of seminar!”

“The leader’s greatest gift is the power of attention. What we put our attention on, grows.”