Bite Sized Business Tips

2 minute reads for the values-led business leader

Snippets for purpose and values-led business leaders about meeting our responsibilities to our team, customers, owners, communities and suppliers. Context is everything, so these aren't dogma - rather a stimulus for thought. Subscribe below.

The recession doesn’t own your response

Official confirmation of recession, tax raises and spending cuts. Doom and gloom 24x7 on the news. Here's my take on what it means for us as SME business owners. Context

This is not the first recession, and it won't be the last. Sometimes they've hurt a little, sometimes a ...
Read More

“We need to make it easier to do the right thing”. Diversity in companies with Martin Mason, CEO of Unleashed

I remember in the early 90s being told to staple my photograph to any CVs I sent out applying for work. I'm no George Clooney, so I wondered why.I later found out it was so that people who only had my name to go on would see that I wasn't ...
Read More

What if the easy thing were always the right thing?

Make doing right easy. If there were a single mantra for consistently improving business (and life, and the planet, and my dancing), it would be tough to find a more effective one than "make it easy to do the right thing". Whether it's addressing commercial issues, strategic execution, or values ...
Read More

Fashion can be done ethically – Antonia Johnstone, CEO Sign of the Times

When it comes to sustainability and human rights, Fashion has earned a terrible reputation. And mostly for very good reason. But there are some shining examples in there.One of these is pre-owned luxury fashion retailer Sign of the Times. The original Chelsea shop was founded to media buzz in the ...
Read More

Too little clarity disempowers your team. Too much suffocates them

A key foundation stone for scaling effectively is clarity. Clarity of purpose first, then of values, of means and of responsibilities. But every CEO who wants to scale will have to grapple with how much detail is needed in terms of that clarity. Your team probably wants more detail (while ...
Read More

Is your impatience impacting your team?

We're a restless bunch, us founders. We're don't tend to be particularly patient, and we get frustrated when people "don't just get it". Or in reality, when they don't "get" what we get. It's because we're passionate about what we're building. And as a result, we can be less forgiving ...
Read More

Doing good and having meaning is a far bigger focus than growing – Stephanie Fisher, Founder Hello Earth

You’ve just moved from one end of the planet to the other. You’re pregnant. And you want to be working. What do you do?It’s a sad indictment on how the workplace still treats pregnancy that for my guest on this #KarmicCapitalist podcast episode, starting a company seemed a more plausible ...
Read More

Getting ready for Next Year

New year round the corner, recession in the works, and a burgeoning need for our businesses to step up and meet environmental and social goals as they meet their commercial ones. Who said running a business was easy? Here's what I'd look at: *FIRST*
Make sure your business-as-usual is working well ...
Read More

“We create wealth on Capitalist principles and distribute it on Marxist ones”

"Create wealth like a Capitalist, distribute it like a Marxist." Here's what that looks like... Simon Biltcliffe believes that Capitalism is a great way to create wealth, but is terrible at distributing it. And Marxism can't create wealth for toffee, but has great principles for distributing it. Adjust for externalities, ...
Read More

Does your business need great people or great processes?

Most businesses I come across, especially in the SME world, are either trying hard to get a bunch of processes in place or are living in shame because they're not! And the ones trying to get processes in place, for a variety of avoidable reasons are usually doing so without ...
Read More

The organisation trying to fix a fundamental employment paradox in the UK

We have a bit of an employment paradox in the UK. As Matt Powell, the founder and CEO of Breaking Barriers, puts it "We have a government that is anti-immigration, and an economy that needs immigration to function at its capacity."That's the gap, the gap between refugees that have made ...
Read More

Empowerment and Response in a Time of Recession and Volatility

It's tough to make decisions and run a business with the volatility we've got going on around us, but there's one business priority at the highest level which I think those of us running SMEs should keep focussed on. Watching politics at the help of the UK right now, you ...
Read More