Amanda Farnsworth, 35, has recently taken on a new role in BBC News, as planning editor for the whole of television. She was formerly deputy editor of the BBC’s respected TV current affairs programme Newsnight. Here she gives us a few tips on how to get a foot in the door at the BBC and how
At the age of 37 Kerry Marcus has already had a varied journalism career, doing everything from covering courts and council meetings as a cub reporter to being part of the launch team for a new national newspaper. She now works for leading UK news supplier ITN as a senior home news editor for the
Laura Hamilton-Wargent has wanted to be in TV since she was 15. Since August she has been working as a runner at Channel 4, whose trainee scheme has been so popular it is already completely oversubscribed. She gives her perspective on how to break into a fashionable but crowded arena
What is your current title? Client group head, which is a title unique to Coutts. What it really means is that I run one of the client-facing divisions within the bank. Coutts has segmented its client base, so rather than a private banker dealing with a property owner in the morning, the chairman of a
Merrill Lynch Investment Managers is one of the world’s largest asset managers, with $525bn of assets under investment. We talk to Karen Hoggard, head of human resources about this unique working environment and get some invaluable advice for graduate applicants
Summary It makes good business sense for firms to make their staff feel good. This new study warns that firms who do not implement a ‘work-life strategy’ – defined as ‘helping people to combine work with family and personal life’ – actually lose competitive advantage to firms who do.
Summary The core theme of this book is Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints, otherwise referred to as TOC. Goldratt argues that manufacturing has for too long focused on producing, ignoring what is demanded by the market place, i.e. demand and capacity. Goldratt believes that one should balance flow through a system to meet the demand of
Summary Navigating Complexity collects together for the first time the ideas and language of a recent development in management theory – complexity theory. The command and control approaches to management ‘no longer hold true’, complexity theory asserts. The theory states that any system contains built-in unpredictability, that every system is comprised of many components and
Thirty goals in 63 international matches for England, a remarkable average of more than 20 goals a season in the Premier League and a league championship medal for unfashionable Blackburn Rovers – you’ve definitely done well for yourself. But could you do better? Your decision to quit international football after the European Championships in the
Summary Handy’s book is a groundbreaking philosophical and practical guide to the inevitable changing ways of organizing work and the workforce. Handy starts from the viewpoint that radical change is not only desirable but essential, if economics and society are not to be irreversibly damaged. The book focuses on the necessity of becoming more creative
Summary Management consultant Bob Garratt told us that he wrote his latest book as ‘a counterblast to myopic thinking’ among senior managers in the quest for company efficiency. Garratt shifts the focus away from the current vogue for downsizing and cost cutting, towards a value-system that preserves and encourages employees at all levels. Get employees doing
Summary In 1979 journalist Keith Waterhouse was commissioned by his editor at UK national tabloid the Daily Mirror to write an instruction manual for the newspaper’s new recruits. The result was a booklet that became an instant success, with half the hacks in Fleet Street trying to beg, borrow or photocopy what had started as
Summary Jack Welch Speaks is precisely what its title suggests: a collection of quotations from the chairman of General Electric Corporation (GE), one of the biggest companies in the world. These quotations are arranged by subject and deal partly with his own life, but mainly with his competitive, ruthless style of management, making it a
Summary The academic and consultant Andrew Brown has selected six key elements of leadership that, he believes, illuminate the secrets of great leaders. Illustrated with countless examples of leaders from history and today, The Six Dimensions of Leadership, first published in 1999, tackles in 200 racy pages the six qualities in turn: heroism, acting
Summary In the introduction, the authors admit that this book was turned down by countless publishing houses with the objection: ‘Who cares? Who wants to read about techies pissed off at their jobs?’ Co-author Bill Lessard says he is a ‘living testament to the fact that most Internet careers are nasty, brutish and short’. So,
Summary Goffee and Jones – the BBC director of human resources – reject the assumption of some business books that the character of a corporation is a uniform, single concept. They see it as complex and multiple-faceted. Every firm is composed of several cultures, they explain. These are fluid, liable to change, and are sometimes
In the fictitious advertising agency Miller Shanks nothing ever seems to go to plan. When The Sun picks up a story that Gloria Hunniford has been groped by a client on an film shoot in Mauritius and PAs are making mock suicide attempts back at the office in London you might be tempted to think
Summary When Giants Learn to Dance sets out to show how truly innovative organizations are winning in the business world, pitting the bureaucratic management of corporate America against the post-entrepreneurial organization.
Summary Tom Peters’ 1994 book, The Pursuit of Wow!, is very much a product of its time, geared towards the contemporary and future marketplace and concentrating its energies upon the Internet, the open-plan office and the happy workforce.
Email etiquette – or ‘Netiquette’ – is causing traditional letters writers to scratch their heads in consternation. For in less than five years, the advent of electronic mail has thrown many writing conventions out of the virtual window. Even Debrett’s has recognised the dilemma and addressed the problem it in its 1996 Guide to
