Recharge On Air With Alan Hargreaves

It's easy to get stuck in the office, yet that's often the last place where good ideas turn up. To stay at the leading edge, the best managers make a point of getting out more, catching up with customers, suppliers, even competitors.

Strategy is the big picture we are trying to achieve, but it's tactics that keep us in the now and make it happen.

Perfect competition is great in theory but it never actually exists. That's because a business can't thrive in perfect conditions. A successful strategy is often based on creating inefficient markets.

Anyone starting a new business could learn a lot from surfing. It's not just about how you perform on the wave, it's also about how you get on the wave in the first place. Alan recalls his teenage years.

You can't change your DNA but you can change which parts of it you use or don't use. Instead of doing what you've always done, try looking outside the square.

It's is often exhilarating to get promoted. Being handed a challenge is uplifting and motivating. But it can also be scary. Alan talks about the common fears that managers face and what you can do about them.

Incentive payments often boost the quantity of output but they don't necessarily do much for its quality. In fact research indicates incentives are counterproductive in a lot of situations. What sort of incentives actually work?

Masses of books are written about leadership. What core principles are common to the best of them?

There is a lot of talk about "charisma" and it's role in management. But too often we confuse charisma with celebrity. Truly charismatic leaders base their power on their character rather than their personality.

It is getting harder and harder to get money from the government for any project, even really sensible ones. To get a hearing, you need to be able to offer some help with public finances. Alan looks at an innovative financing project in which disadvantaged families save the government money by improving their own lives.

A lot of the big issues that affect our lives are way beyond our control. Attempts to forecast the outcome of global events is futile. Rather than worry about them, you need to get on with your job in front of you. Find out more at http://alanhargreaves.com

Rapid change is now a constant in the business environment and you need to be highly flexible to cope. What can you do to stay agile? Find out more at http://alanhargreaves.com

Do all entrepreneurs have psychological disorders. One common view of startup entrepreneurs is that they are somehow weird. Why is that? We need to look beyond the negative view of the word 'disorder'.

Rapid growth is a great goal but overreaching can be counter productive. If you want to grow a sound, sustainable business, set goals that are a stretch but not impossible.

Business success often seems random. How can you increase your exposure to lucky breaks?

There are several common element to the worst decisions I've made. A central one is not asking for help when I don't really know what I'm doing. You can avoid a lot of disasters just by accepting that some people do some things better than you. The art of management and the art of delegation are closely related.

Just how bankable is intuition? Often it's the way to go, often it's not. Alan looks at ways to assess whether or not you should back your hunches.

Too much information can take our eye off the main game. Whether it's investing in stocks, managing a business or running your life, stepping back and looking at the big picture can be more rewarding than diving too deeply into the detail.

Negotiations never go exactly to plan. Often they are scary and confronting. But just as often their outcomes are pleasantly surprising.

There is nothing new about the term "disruption". Business have been coming and going for hundreds of years. What is it that makes some new startups so disruptive that even major corporations are destabilised by them.