Bite Sized Business Tips

Leaders should not empower their teams. We should not empower women. We should not empower under-represented minorities. As far back as I can recall, I've struggled with this word. Empower, for me, carries deep connotations of giving someone power. Of patronising people with power. But I don't believe you can give ...
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"We have everything we need to fix things and make it better for everyone in the world... Perhaps not the billionaires." Can business leaders make a serious dent in climate change? Mark Maslin, UCL professor of Sustainability, company founder of Rezatec and author of "How to Save Our Planet - ...
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Purpose can be a real facilitator for growth and profitability. And in turn, growth increases your ability to make impact, while profitability allows the business to serve at a higher level. It's a wonderfully virtuous cycle when you get it right. A beautiful case study of this is Hyphen8, a Salesforce ...
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I'm stunned sometimes by how often the basics get overlooked and then bite your business in the most painful way. Founders are often visionaries. We have a dream of what we want to build. We have strategies. Purpose. Missions. Challenge is that the business needs to be continually fuelled while ...
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This episode of #TheKarmicCapitalist podcast is so back-to-back full of real life, practical lessons that it was nigh-on impossible to fit it into our standard time limit. But that's no surprise. Neal Gandhi and his team have taken The Panoply from a standing start to a publicly listed, £1/4 of ...
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Clear Values Simplify. Company values should do 3 things. Align: clear expectations make decisions easier and more delegatable; Attract: aligned customers, team members and investors; Inspire: creates a platform and belief for positive change. A while back, I was talking to a client about the role of values for his ...
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With all the talk of servant leadership, we forget the need for servant followership. And that all of that service is to the community. Companies that create the most good run like well functioning communities. And thriving communities work because the collective interest of *all* (aka purpose), is more important ...
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Is the business of business just business? And if so, how far does "business" go? Are benefits business? Internal committees? I've always been a fan of the ethos of Basecamp. I love how they simplify. I really like their readiness to do the things that make sense, rather than the ...
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Plateaus are insidious. Because although they're not a good place to be, there's not so much pain that you rip off the plaster to do something different. There are some common patterns in most companies that hit The Plateau... ... There's always a good reason why doing things differently won't ...
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"It annoys me how often I need to tell my leadership team what to do. But if I don't, they just won't do the right thing." (How to upset everyone in one fell swoop. But it needs saying, so here goes...) If you're a CEO frustrated with your leadership team ...
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Hard choices often end up in one of two ugly places:

1. Analysis paralysis - no decision, but just an ongoing slow pain, or
2. flip-flopping decisions - often depending on who you're speaking to.

I've seen this a lot in many leaders, including CEOs. Sometimes, it's because the choices ...
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People problems in companies tend to boil down to one of two things. Wrong people hired, or right people hired, but then not empowered. We need to both (1) hire the right people to bet on, and; (2) place our bet. Doing either of those well isn't easy. But I ...
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