Beyond the Quarter

Business for humans

Bite Sized Business Tips

Quick reads for the values-led business leader about meeting our responsibilities to our team, customers, owners, communities and suppliers. We strongly believe that context is everything for high level leadership, so don't take these as dogma, but simply to stimulate thought.

Is your policy serving a purpose or masking your inability to deal with uncertainty?

Is your policy serving a purpose or masking your inability to deal with uncertainty?

Are your policies up to scratch? Consider this. True story. For 11 years, a company has an expense policy that says "don't take the piss". That's it. Not a word more. This serves them well for 11 years. Then, one night at a works drinks gathering, someone orders a several-hundred ...
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Remote working increases your need to align at 4 levels

Remote working increases your need to align at 4 levels

Remote working should force most business leaders to think hard about how they lead. Especially as tomorrow's world of work will be a lot more remote than yesterday's. For many team members, it creates much higher levels of independence than they've felt in an office. That level of autonomy can ...
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This unknown unknown could be the making of many businesses

This unknown unknown could be the making of many businesses

All of us leading businesses today face an unknown unknown.An unk unk (the abbreviation that Boeing engineers gave this paradigm half a century before Rumsfeld made the phrase famous), throws up questions we have no certain answers to.What will the world look like coming out of this? And when?
Will I ...
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What do you want to rebuild?

What do you want to rebuild?

We've been forced into an opportunity. Top of mind for every CEO is team, then cash flow. Maintain sales and payment, and control cost. Rightly so. No cash flow, no business. But unless you're planning to rebuild a business that just goes from hand to mouth, you also need to ...
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This time may be testing your values

This time may be testing your values

What does a values-led business do in the current climate? Well, it can do a lot actually. Reach out to clients to deepen relationships rather than transact. Explore how to provide stability for its workforce through times of volatility. Honour its suppliers where it can, or find ways to minimise ...
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Making commitments is easy. Delivering them, not so much.

Making commitments is easy. Delivering them, not so much.

A diversified portfolio is a really bad idea when it comes to strategic initiatives. A big part of my work is helping SMEs and scale-ups turn their vision, values and strategies into reality. How do we take a list of goals, or our grand vision, or what we say we ...
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Leaders grow fastest in service of something far bigger than themselves

Leaders grow fastest in service of something far bigger than themselves

My times of most significant growth at work always came when I was serving something bigger. Turning around a very dispirited team, the most obvious thing for me was to put myself in their service. And to do it in action, not just in words. It wasn't some grand sacrifice ...
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When is it enough?

When is it enough?

One of the truly beautiful consequences of building a company serving a purpose bigger than itself is that the enormity of the mission can free you from unhealthy personal or financial ambition. When you build with a deep rooted desire to make a difference, a dent in something you care ...
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