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.

If you want your business to make a difference, make sure it makes money

If you want your business to make a difference, make sure it makes money. This is not about "me first", which I abhor and have written about elsewhere (https://btq.wpengine.com/blogs/blog/bsbt/the-me-economy/). It is about ensuring that your business is in a position to serve the causes it cares about. I've seen analogies ...
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Leadership makes you neither superior nor infallible, but is simply a role you play

The best leaders I've known have always intimately got that being a leader is more of a role that they play than an hierarchical position in which they sit. Meaning that they don't lord over you. They don't assume that they have all the right answers. They don't expect you ...
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How did we allow technology to undermine our commitments?

Once in a land we all lived in a long long time ago, I'd call a few people to arrange to meet. We'd fix a date, then we'd all magically find ourselves at the agreed location. Today, I email out a doodle poll. A quarter of the invitees reply. The ...
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Interview for Values fit, not Cultural alignment

Do you interview for cultural fit? I did. And I was wrong. I've interviewed well over 1000 people. As the person responsible for my team (whether in my own company, on the board of another, or as a senior manager post-acquisition), I was the "culture" part of the interview for ...
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Leaders, your role is to catalyse, amplify and own

Leaders, your role is to catalyse, amplify and own. In fact, whether you realise it or not, you'll be doing all of those all of the time simply by virtue of being a leader, a founder, a CEO. Which means that your challenge is whether you'll be doing them intentionally ...
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The “me” economy

This graph says it all. We have become far more focussed on ourselves than on others, and the world is worse for it. I've used Google's Ngram to pull together the relative usage of the phrase "Yourself first" and "Others first" over 40 years from 2008. You can see how ...
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The right order of attributes to look for in a potential team member

There is usually a strong focus during the recruitment process on a candidate's skill and experience. This is absolutely right and important, but it really in my books isn't the highest priority. In priority order, these are the things I look for in candidates: 1. Attitude & values 2. Aptitude ...
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UK Government Gets on the Responsible Capitalism Bandwagon

It is good to see the government making noises about the role of values in the companies which it buys goods and services from (http://bsb.tips/ukgovtvalues). Minister for the Cabinet Office, David Lidington said that the government will "extend the requirements of the Social Value Act to ensure all major procurements ...
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Great processes don’t remove the need to have great people

"Turn it into a process". Most businesses I work with are either doing this, or live in shame because they're not! I enjoyed Sam Carpenter's Work the System. Along with The E-myth, it creates a compelling case for proceduralising what your business does. Rightly so. But the key justification I ...
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Leaders – pause before launching your team at your latest idea

More crucial than knowing which things to focus on is absolute clarity about what to not do altogether. Because those "not quite as important" things will block out your time, energy and focus, and prevent you giving those to the things that count. And that wastage gets amplified exponentially when ...
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Culture radiates to all your business relationships

There was little greater testament of the culture we built than the annual London to Paris or Amsterdam bike rides that we organised. Every year, a group of us from the ultra-fit semi-pros, to the overweight, unfit, anything-but-pros (i.e. me) would do the 3 day cycle to raise money, mostly ...
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Good people sometimes do bad things

Sadly, I all too often see criticism at work focus on the individual rather than their actions. While we contextualise our own actions, we generalise everyone else's. For example, I was late because my train was delayed, but you were late because you're disorganised and don't build in contingency. Or ...
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