Angela Prentner-SmithManaging Consultant, This is Milk Running a business is hard, there's no doubt about that. So when I was asked to share some tips for a recent eBook 'The Habits of Successful Female Entrepreneurs' I was delighted and honoured to take part because it's not easy; and I still drink in any advice I can get on this constant learning curve! Although the authors of these tips are all female entrepreneurs I would say all of their advice is transferable to anyone - male or female. We all face similar challenges as entrepreneurs and here I've picked out 12 of my favourite tips for success - enjoy! Interested to learn more about us? Click on the button! (Blog first published 31/01/2017)
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The countdown is on: just over a week to go until the Next Milk Bar! On Friday 10 November, we'll be exploring the worlds of Virtual and Augmented Reality. Read what our speaker, Stewart MacKenzie-Leigh of Stugo has to say about it! Stewart co-founded Stugo, a boutique software consultancy, with his twin brother Gordon 8 years ago. He taught himself to write programs at a young age and has previously worked as a researcher with the University of Strathclyde, helping to develop image similarity algorithms. He is passionate about technology and how it can be used to solve problems. We've got another great line-up of speakers for our upcoming Milk Bar on February 10th, Covering 'Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality in Buisness: We've been chatting to our speakers to find out more about them and their thoughts on these emerging technologies first up Biança Baker of Steadipix Productions Biança is a highly-experienced programme maker, with twenty years of storytelling experience as a TV Producer / Director for ITV, BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5, RTE and Discovery. In the last two years Biança has started using her well-honed storytelling skills to create narrative driven 360° and virtual reality films for corporate and broadcast clients. In the lead up to our very first Milk Bar Meet Up on 22 April, we’re delighted to introduce the great speakers who will be presenting their ideas about Methods of Innovation. In the second instalment of our speaker profile series, we’d like to introduce you to Jacqueline Barr, who is a Programme Manager for Lloyd’s Banking Group. Jacqueline has been a change leader at Lloyd’s for 13 years and has been involved in many change programmes, including launching intelligent finance and an Internet bank. In 2014 and 2015, she won the award of Programme Manager of the Year for her division for taking the brave first steps into scrum. Now on their third scrum, Jacqueline’s division has coached and encouraged many other areas to make the move to agile. The countdown to our next Milk Bar is on! In less than 2 weeks, on Friday 11 November, we’ll be exploring the Future of Work with engaging talks and sessions led by some of Scotland’s leading entrepreneurs. One of which is Marjie Gracie, Founder of i, not robot, who will be talking about the 'human' dimension of change readiness and transformation. Having worked for organisations such as British Airways and Dell, Marjie's career has spanned over 20 years in dynamic, fast-paced environments. Starting at grass roots in customer services, her career trajectory has included a number of roles from Team Leader to Coach. In August of 2012, Marjie founded 'i, not robot'. Her intentionally named consultancy discovers and develops talented teams through a creative, thought-provoking and energetic approach to coaching and team dynamics. Nicky LogueMarketing Director Hello! Today is National Mentoring Day so we thought we’d mark the occasion by sharing some of our experiences with mentoring and hopefully encourage some of you lovely folk to get involved, whether Mentee or Mentor (or ideally both!), there’s awesome benefits all round.
We’ve had quite a mentoring themed week here at TiM. On Tuesday Angela was interviewed about being a mentor at Entrepreneurial Spark and yesterday Angela and I met up with Carol-Anne Morris to arrange a business mentor through the Scottish Chambers and Scottish Enterprise Business Mentoring Service. We’ll hopefully be matched with suitable business mentor from the thousand strong database in the next week or so! We all know people who are daunted by standing up and speaking in front of others. Upfront is a response to this, allowing people to share the stage with speakers and experience what it feels like without the pressure of having to perform. During our next Milk Bar event on Friday 11 November, we’ll be supporting upfront when one of our speaker’s, Alasdair McGill, will share his stage.
We've got a great line-up of speakers and facilitators for our upcoming Milk Bar event on Friday 11 November. The topic this time is Transforming the World of Work and we've been chatting to our speakers to find out more about them and their thoughts on the workplaces of the future.
Angela Prenter-SmithManaging Director Has Agile won or is it dead already?Something I’ve been pondering for a while is what’s the next big thing in project delivery? Agile has been around for a while now, and businesses are still struggling with its adoption. I asked the IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysis) LinkedIn group what they thought, and I got about 40 differing opinions. I did some research and again I got a typical mix of views.
‘Agile is dead already.’ ‘Agile was never meant to be used for what it is now.’ ‘Agile is the only way.’ ‘Businesses need to be agile, but that doesn’t mean they need to adopt a specific ‘agile methodology.’ Mark CochraneDigtal Intern, This is Milk Mark, our digital intern from Glasgow Clyde College, tells us about his placement at This is MilkI was just enjoying my time in college when Ruby Mitchell (the college organiser) said that I will be attending a work placement to fit in with my college course. My course was centered around all things to do with computers, from hardware to webpage design, and I found it all very enjoyable as I have a keen interest in computers and electronics.
However, during a two-week break, I was invited to attend an interview for a company called ‘This is Milk’ Nicky LogueMarketing Director
Storytelling has been a popular business buzzword in recent years and with companies clambering to find new and exciting ways to stick in their customer’s subconscious, are they at risk of forgetting what people really want to hear and how they want to listen to it?
Barbara GeczyCustomer Analyst, This is Milk A big hello to Barbara Géczy, the newest member of the TiM team! While we prepare to welcome her, Barbara explains why Milk has been a recurring theme in her working life to date! Exactly two years ago, I spent a month long internship at a dairy farm in France to improve my French and get to know farming practices related to my food engineering studies back in Hungary, where I'm from. I had to face new challenges I'd never encountered as a student such as getting up at 6am every morning to milk the cows. Now cows have extremely efficient body clocks, they know exactly what to expect and when to expect it, so I had no choice but to adhere to their routine - tough task masters for a first job!
As I'm a small girl from a big city, it was hard to get familiar with this new lifestyle: dressing like an authentic French cowgirl, cleaning my boots in the evening, looking after cows all day... Back then, I wouldn't have considered that the words 'This is Milk' could have any other meaning for me than a mug of nutritional hot liquid. But fortunately, now they do. Denis YordanovDigital Intern, This is Milk In the first of our 'On the Horizon' series focused on future trends, we explore self-driving cars and their likely impact on society and business.In this brand new series of blog posts titled 'On the Horizon' we will be exploring some of the future trends that we think are likely to have a widespread impact both on business and society. When imagining the future, most people think about quirky and futuristic technologies, and understandably so. The number of life-changing technological innovations in the last two centuries has been overwhelming and the pace of change even more so. Innovations and developments in modes of transport can definitely be categorised as life-changing, both for business and society, and, although we take them for granted today, many of them would have seemed totally radical and in-achievable once upon a time. Just think about how futuristic the first cars seemed at a time when everyone else had horses and truly believed they would never be replaced, or how ridiculous the concept of flying across oceans and continents in hours would have been. Well, we are in that same situation today, although perhaps with slightly more open minds! Short of flying cars, there is probably no other transport innovation that captives the minds of so many than the autonomous car. Rumours and ideas about cars that drive themselves have been around for a while but mostly they have been perceived as something that might happen in the distant future. The reality is that they are happening sooner than you might expect. In light of the release of Elon Musk's Master Plan, Part Deux we decided to explore current and future developments of self-driving cars and some of the possible implications for business and society. Self-driving cars are no longer an idea of the very distant future and a testament to that statement is the amount of development and investment in them from many of the major automakers. There are at least 14 automakers that are betting that autonomous cars might be the next big thing. Google and Tesla are the most obvious ones, but many of the more traditional manufacturers such as Ford, General Motors, Honda, Toyota, BMW, and Audi are also heavily backing the production of such cars. Furthermore, Nissan have announced plans to have advanced autonomous vehicles on the roads by 2020, Uber have announced they are opening an autonomous driving research centre and there are various rumours about an iCar by Apple. Clearly there is a buzz in the auto industry and companies are racing to finish and produce driverless cars. Although fully autonomous vehicles probably won't be introduced in the next decade, and there will have to be many changes in both legislation and people's attitudes before all cars become driverless, some estimates put the number of cars with self-driving features on the roads by 2020 at 10 million. Here are some video examples of already existing self-driving technology: How will self-driving cars impact our society?Let's explore the likely changes. If you knew that during your one hour commute on the motorway before and after work you don't have to hold the steering wheel or keep your foot on the gas how would your habits change? Would you have breakfast in the driver's seat while the car is actually driving you to work, or maybe catch up on news and emails? To take it even further, what if you could sleep in your car on your way to a meeting or another city? And what about the local and global business? If you were the owner of a roadside hotel with revenue largely dependent on travellers staying overnight, your business may well become 'collateral damage' to this disruption. If that hotel owner doesn't stop to consider and prepare for the likely impact on their business, how long will it be before it's already too late to react? Let's imagine we are an insurance company. Given that almost 90% of all car accidents are due to human error, some proponents of self-driving cars argue that if all cars were autonomous, safety will increase and road fatalities will be heavily reduced. If this happens how would our business model and insurance pricing policies have to adapt to accommodate for the disruption, and how early do we have to start thinking about it? What if self-driving cars were so safe that people were banned from manually driving on public roads? Following that line of thought, maybe we should explore this future trend from the perspective of the USA Government. There are roughly 2.8 million truck drivers in the States and 9 million people working in transport. If truck companies replace their fleets with cost-saving autonomous trucks (since computers don't have to rest) what measures should the US Government implement to combat the rise of unemployment stemming not only from the truck drivers but from the aforementioned roadside hotels, restaurants, and gas stations? Why should you care about who drives your car in the future?As long as you still get from A to B, it doesn't matter right? Well yes it might be great for us all personally, but what about your business, your market or the wider economy? Some of the things we've imagined in this article likely won't come to fruition, and we haven't even really scratched the surface with all the possible outcomes (positive and negative), but radical change will happen, whether we're ready or not. The point of 'Horizon Watching' is not about getting every prediction right but it is about keeping your eyes and minds open and considering what future trends will mean for your business or industry - and having a plan or at least an idea of how to react if they do happen. As an organisation it is hard to know whether you are in the middle of a disruption before it is too late but if you are equipped with the relevant information and have prepared in advance, the chances of coming out on top increase exponentially. Interested in Horizon Watching or any of our other services? (Blog first published 03/08/2016)
Angela Prentner-Smith will be co-hosting a design session at Friday's Milk Bar with Sarah Drummond, of Snook, on what a working day in the future might look like.
Ahead of the Milk Bar we asked Angela a few questions: 1. What brings you to the Milk Bar Meet Up? Well I set up the Milk Bar due to frustrations I was having with events and networking. I wanted a place where we could talk about what's coming next as opposed to what's happening now. How can we make things better? Are there better ways of doing things? What’s coming next for us, what will we have to prepare for next, are there better ways of doing things? I love to hear and learn from other people's thoughts on these issues, and so the Milk Bar was born! 2. You will be co-hosting a design session that shows what a work day in the future might look like. Can you tell us a bit more about why you chose this topic for the Milk Bar? Sarah and I designed this topic to get people thinking about what the future might look like. The great thing about the future is that we are designing it as we go, without even knowing it. What we as business people need to do is to proactively design it, rather than let it happen to us. The exercise draws on the tools of service design and design thinking to get people thinking and doing rather than just listening. 3. Why do you think it is important for organisations to prepare for the future? The world is changing so quickly. Digital and technological advancements have meant even the safest of businesses and industries are threatened by disruptors. In order to keep up with customer expectations, employee expectations, the changing workplace landscape and competitors, businesses need to be on the front foot. 4.What do you think the most important trend is going to be for your business in the next 5 years? For This is Milk – I think the trend towards employee learning is key. The critical component that will help any business to deal with constant change is constant learning. If we aren’t learning, we can’t keep up with change, we can’t inform our business strategies with the latest information and we won’t deliver the best to our customers. So for a business that's all about change and transformation the key to our success will be in constant learning and changing ourselves! There is data to back this up, but it seems obvious to me! Don’t stagnate, and keep learning to keep successful. Meet Angela at the Milk Bar on Friday 5 August 2016, 17:30-19:30 at Snook Interchange Glasgow, 84 Miller Street, Glasgow. With just over a week until our second Milk Bar event on Friday 5 August, we'd like to introduce you to the speakers we've got lined up to talk and host workshops on the topic of Horizon Watching.
Denis YordanovDigital Intern, This is Milk What business leaders can gain from our Horizon Watching service. Information has always been important - not only for business, but to society as a whole. And information has always been around us, be it in the form of books, newspapers, or word of mouth. However, in recent decades, the amount of information available to us has increased exponentially and is increasing at even faster rates.
Annina ClaessonMarketing Intern, This is Milk Marketing Intern Annina talks about her experience in Cell 8 and what she's learned along the way. I imagine that anyone's This is Milk story starts with the name. I was looking through the University of Glasgow's Internship Hub vacancies when I came across a strangely-monikered company looking for a Marketing Intern. After it became clear that this company did not in fact deal in dairy, but rather business improvement, my attention and interest was immediately caught by its emphasis on people, and its drive to stand out from the crowd of grey suits. My background was vastly different from business consultancy, but that did not seem to be a disadvantage at This is Milk. It was different. From what I could glean from the job description and the website, This is Milk seemed like a place where I could make a real contribution, and have fun in the process.
Denis YordanovDigital Intern Setting yourself apart by your organisational culture is a key to success, but what happens when that culture is at odds with businesses you work with? Organisational culture is undoubtedly a popular topic among academics and executives alike. And although there has been a lot of research and discussions on organisational culture, there has been significantly less interest in the concept of culture clash.
A strange phenomenon, given the fact that all theory and anecdotes teach us that every organisation has its own unique culture. So, how can companies interact and do business with each other in the contemporary business world if their organisational cultures are different and quite often at odds? Dennis Yordanov & Annina ClaessonDigital Interns, This is Milk Our take on volunteering at TEDx Glasgow's 2016 event, A Disruptive World. Two of our team, Annina Claesson and Denis Yordanov, had the chance to volunteer for and attend the 5th annual TEDx Glasgow Conference on the 3rd of June. We asked them a few questions about what it was like.
Denis YordanovDigital Intern, This is Milk Blockchain technology and its potential impact on commerce and society.As technology permeates through everything that businesses do, little is left the same. In some cases it's only the tools that are different, but sometimes new technology serves to disrupt and transform underlying processes and entrenched ideas. This is certainly what's happening to the financial sector. 'FinTech' is helping financial transactions become more efficient and customer-friendly and no more so than in the case of the blockchain.
If you've paid for anything using Bitcoin your transaction will be recorded in the blockchain and it is the technology that allows for the digital exchange of value without an intermediary. Annina ClaessonMarketing Intern, This is Milk
Angela Prentner-SmithManaging Consultant, This is Milk What digital transformation means to me. I was recently asked to provide a few words as to how ‘digital’ has changed the world in the last 20 years.
At first I thought of how the world of work has changed – emails, web projects, digital marketing, but I quickly realised this isn’t the most profound difference in my life as a result of ‘digital’. I've been a ‘digital professional’ since before ‘digital’ was even a thing. It’s become second nature. I started this ‘digital’ career so long ago, it's just been my career – not really so profound. People may ‘get it’ more now, but it's still just part of what I do. Angela Prentner-SmithManaging Consultant, This is Milk Looking back on the night This is Milk really set off - with a speech from Nicola Sturgeon. Back in October, This is Milk launched as a company with a celebratory night in the Orkney Enterprise Centre in Govan. It was a fun night attended by many - including the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon.
In the weeks leading up to our very first Milk Bar Meet Up in Glasgow on 22 April 2016, we’d like to introduce you to the great speakers who will be presenting their ideas about Methods of Innovation. These are some of the most forward-thinking minds in the current Scottish business scene and they have some fantastic insights about how to make businesses better through innovation.
Angela Prentner-SmithManaging Director, This is Milk What a birthday party can teach you about how your customers feel. How do your customers feel about your business? Think about what you remember most about the good, the bad, and the ugly in your experiences as a customer. What stands out the most? The colour of the walls or the website header, the effectiveness or friendliness of the staff, the waiting time? No matter what aspects shaped your experience, what sticks in your mind and defines your overall impression is how it made you feel. Were you annoyed by the cumbersome signup process of the website or were you pleasantly surprised at how happily the restaurant accommodated your dietary requirements?
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