Having good "people management" skills is important. However, if the firm is going in the wrong direction, you will still fail - only faster! Hard Management provides managers with the perspective, insight and skills to make the critical "directional decisions".

A number of principles are at the core of our approach to achieving sustainable competitive advantage and these distinguish our approach:

• value management - a longer-term perspective that helps managers to think in terms of the total value of the business. A firm with rising profits can actually be declining in value. Managers need to be able to see beyond the balance sheet and profit and loss account (which show the symptoms) and understand the performance drivers (the causes).

• the importance of intangibles - what drives the performance of a business - machines, office buildings, photocopiers. Of course not - and yet these are typical of the assets on the balance sheet. The most valuable assets are absent:

• relationships with customers and suppliers
• R&D knowledge
• market knowledge
• staff skills
• brand .... etc

Hard Management rescues managers from the myopia of traditional financial measures and helps them to focus on and develop the true wealth-generating assets in the business. 

• marketing-led - along with phrases such as "customer-focused", marketing-led is a much mis-used phrase. Marketing is not simply the function that deals with advertising and mailshots; it is a whole approach to business. All managers must understand branding because all managers have an impact on it. They should be able to discern between "differentiation" and merely being different. Above all they need to comprehend the factors affecting customer buying decisions - and why the product or service is often not the major reason.

• pragmatism - from theory and example to implementation. The purpose of our programmes is to provide managers with knowledge and skills that they can utilise immediately.