Bite Sized Business Tips

Do we take offence, or do we change things? Or do we do both? There’s a lovely parable in Buddhist tradition. To walk in a world of thorns, we could remove all the thorns or cover every inch with leather. Or we can wear leather sandals. Many of our current ...

Headlines like to paint an extreme. So remote working is either our saviour, or the start of our demise. And the reporting has followed an accelerated form of Gartner's hype cycle. The hype told us that working remotely was all good - less commuting, more family time, greener planet. And ...

Next week, my eldest child starts at uni. And it makes me wonder what kind of parent I've been. Not just whether I've had a positive influence on his character, or created enough laughter on the way. But also whether I've helped create a better or worse world for him ...

I find that the people who should the most, often do the least. When I meet a manager who shoulds all over him or herself (an apt phrase at too many levels, but sadly not one I came up with!), I start to get wary. They're usually loud with it ...

Most strategic decisions made by leadership teams are at best irrelevant, and at worst harmful. And this is for one simple reason. They don't get implemented. This is especially the case in SMEs looking to scale up. And it happens for a number of reasons. Sometimes no record is made ...

Those of us with an entrepreneurial mind tend to be bling-hogs (guilty as charged). Our bling is new books, new systems, new processes, new products, latest recruit, newest client... One of the worst impacts of this is that we can allow our obsession with bling to obscure what we really ...

The majority of my work these days tends to be with companies that need support in scaling up. That may be because they're on a rapid growth path, and need to ensure that the business scales robustly. Or because they've plateaued (or started a slow decline), with a myriad of ...

Does your financial duty trump your moral one as a business leader? For sure, we want to align the two if we can, but what if there is a conflict? Here are 4 books I've really enjoyed, which complement each other really well, and should be read by everyone building ...

Something I’ve observed in many leaders is the feeling that they have to have an answer when asked a question. Not so. And not even for the reason a thousand coaches have told you, which is to be vulnerable. There's a deeper reason. Which is that often it's not really ...

"I cannot judge what he did, because I did not have his information". A particularly sage comment from the then 82-year-old Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore. Judgement is in many ways the same as advice. When we give advice, it is from our perspective, which is always ...

It’s a funny thing I notice about LinkedIn. Posts about vulnerability, authenticity and psychological safety get a lot of interaction. Which is great, as these are important, if nuanced, topics in leadership. However, posts about some of the harder parts of leadership, such as dealing with an underperforming team member, ...

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” What is true of "men" in Edmund Burke's famous quote is true of any social unit - communities, companies, governments. I believe most humans are good, and the vast majority are not intentionally bad ...