Bite Sized Business Tips

The "Be Authentic" religion has always troubled me. Dogmatic. Non-negotiable. Supreme. I don't buy it. It's not the most important thing, because it positions your "authenticity" as more important than the collective good. "Be authentic" is a selfish mantra. The top of the hierarchy isn't to be authentic. It is ...
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We all know someone who never lets the truth get in the way of a good story. Many of us have elected those people into national office. But look inside a strategy session, and you'll see grown women and men not letting reality interfere with their strategic goal. Why let ...
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A New Year's wish for all of us. There’s a Special Place to work. One that is exceptionally rare, and often only temporary. It’s a place where the leaders understand that servant leadership is not a badge to show off for the world to know what a great leader they ...
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Where Your Strategy Goes to Die No. 6 - Not giving it explicit timeAm I the only one who loves this time between Christmas and New Year for work? I don't have meetings. I don't usually do a full day. But the time I have is spent in thinking bigger.It's ...
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Where Your Strategy Goes to Die #5 - Net Zero by 2050The challenge with Net Zero by 2050, as many point out, is that it creates no urgency. It is too far away for people to feel the need to act. This is why "the decisive decade" - what we ...
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PowerPoint lures many a finely-honed strategy into its lair, where it then suffocates all life from it. And the ugliest of those deaths even have spreadsheets copied into the slide decks. PowerPoints give us a feeling of having structured something. Given it shape. Made a declaration. Add a spreadsheet, and ...
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You've put the ring on your strategy's finger as a leadership team. But no sooner you've walked out the room than a member of the leadership team presses you with an attractive-looking opportunity that brings in a number. But it doesn't align. "Yes, I know we said we'd focus on ...
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I remember sitting in a leadership team strategy awayday some years back where the team agreed on its 14 priorities. ... 14. Fourteen. ... More than double the number of company priorities than the number of members of the leadership team. You're on a hiding to nothing if your strategy ...
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Here are 3 strategic objectives I’ve seen more than once:

1. Employee engagement
2. Marketing
3. Customer retention

Trouble is they’re not strategic objectives. They're topics. Functions. At best a wish-list of stuff we want to look at, get better at, or start doing. But not strategic objectives. For your strategy ...
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"Our ambition should not be to win, then, but to play with our full effort. Our intention is not to be thanked or recognized, but to help and to do what we think is right. Our focus is not on what happens to us but on how we respond. In ...
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You don't lead organisations. You lead people. Obvious, but so often forgotten. I know many CEOs who are at heart very human and humane, but feel a peer pressure especially when in groups to do "what a CEO is supposed to do". And they lose sight of the fact that ...
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On climate, on social issues, on using business for good - are we all mini-Borises? Boris's climate policies and plans (inasmuch as they exist) fall a long way short of Boris's climate promises. If you're generous, you may flatter him with a "road to hell paved with good intentions". If ...
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