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.
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If it didn’t work out last time, why would you do the same again?
If you try something and it works out badly, would you learn to do it differently next time?Oh the tedium of generic questions.Because the answer certainly shouldn't be an automatic "yes".Or "no".Because the context is everything.I gave a CEO I was working with advice once not to sack a member ...

The maximisation of profit is the root of all evil
All? Maybe not entirely. But it is certainly the root of the evils which have impacted us most. And that's why your company should avoid this as a primary objective. But here's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that profit is evil. In fact, within a business context, profit ...
Why the CEO isn’t taking your contribution seriously
If you're in a Senior Leadership Team, your CEO should welcome your contribution to the business at large. But you may find that contribution isn't always welcome. Here are the two key reasons I've seen this happen. 1) The CEO is a closed book and thinks they have all the ...
Coming back to perfection
Summer is fantastic. But also often quite disruptive.Many of the CEOs I work with find that business gets a little bumpy over summer. Routines slip. Sales pipelines slip. People go on holiday (how dare they!) and however smooth (or not) the business was before, it's a little bumpier now.And invariably, ...
If you’re stressed at work, might you be better suited to another job?
Too much stress for anyone at work is unsustainable, and shouldn't be normalised.But if there is regularly too much stress, it's not necessarily the employer's fault. Sometimes, hard to say, but you may just be in the wrong job.I've run and advised consultancies for most of my life. Consulting is ...
Your team wants you to be nice. That’s a problem.
Because you need to be kind more than you need to be nice.Though both would be great!But that's the great disconnect. The disconnect between being kind and being nice.Kindness has to include talking about growth areas. The euphemistically called "constructive feedback".Would you be happy to go around having people avoid ...
Why don’t we tell people to stress?
Why do we treat stress as such an evil? Why is the reaction to a co-worker who is stressed always one of sympathy and advice how to get out of it? No one who's ever led anything of significance has ever got there without stress. None of us would walk ...

Imposter Syndrome is not a condition
Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Now *that's* a condition! In most cases where I've spoken to leaders about it in reality it's something quite different. And very human. It's the human response to growth and new challenges. But because everyone and their dog is talking about it, and a hungry coaching industry ...
If you’re serious about scaling your business, you need to get really unsexy.
If you're after a long-term relationship with someone, you shouldn't be trying to get jiggy every time you meet.It's tiring, it's tedious, it's offensive, and even if it works, it won't last beyond the initial dopamine hit.Same for business. Founders are full of initiatives. That's one of the things that ...
Vulnerability can be a destructive force
Vulnerability's not all motherhood and apple pie. There are some really destructive ways that it can show up. And no more so if you're a founder CEO of a company, where your values and behaviours are very visible and define the company's culture. A vulnerability that shows no way through ...
LinkedIn is telling your employees not to be loyal to you
They're telling everyone that their employer doesn't care about them. There are two agendas at play here. First, bad news gets noticed. If I tell you that your employer doesn't care about you, you're far more likely to read my post than if I tell you that your employer cares ...
You’re standing on the edge of an impossibly high bridge overlooking a ravine.
You've got a bungee rope tethered to you. And I reassure you that the bungee has its limit at precisely your weight. Precisely. Optimised to a single gram. When you're at the bottom, you'll get the best bounceback possible because it will be stretched exactly to its limit. Then just ...