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.

Ask not what purpose can do for your profit

With a nod towards JFK... Ask not what purpose can do for your profits, but what your profits can do to serve your purpose. There's a lot of talk about how purpose makes your company more profitable. With all due respect, that's a pile of horseploppy. Purpose \*can\* enhance your ...
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Build Back Better means Build Back Kinder

Build back better means build back kinder. With a special responsibility if you lead a company. With talk of a K-shaped recovery, where fortunes ascend for some while they plummet for others, it's up to all on the ascendant leg of the K to look out for those on the ...
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Tactics come easy once principles are in the blood.

"Tactics come easy once principles are in the blood" I love that quote from Josh Waitzkin's 'The Art of Learning'. He was applying it to how we display mastery as we learn, and I alluded to this previously when discussing how leaders who are at ease with their leadership and ...
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Greyness is the challenge of leadership

One of the most consistent challenges leaders grapple with as they grow (which is always!) is ambiguity. The continual search for certainty, to define things in a way that is black and white. Whether it's creating organisational structures, or dealing with performance issues, or promotions, or creating comp plans - ...
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Should I scale or should I grow?

Business has an obsession with growth. And usually unlimited growth. A target is set, and we always laud people for beating it. Sometimes with an accelerator for beating it significantly. But although growth is seductive, without scale, it ends up destructive. That's because the growth that we tend to focus ...
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To scale up, your team needs to think like mini-CEOs

A really common refrain I hear from company owners is that no one else on their leadership team thinks like an owner. I have on occasion heard from owner CEOs that they're frustrated that even other *owners* aren't thinking like owners. Scaling effectively needs more than the right processes. It ...
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Work is just a part of life

So here’s the thing. We all play at these different roles we have. We get a job, and we play "professional". We found a company, and we play "CEO". We assume some self importance, some aura of authority, and feed an ego at some level with our level of importance ...
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The question is not “what will new normal look like?”

We will get to a normal. What it looks like, how new or not it will be is open to debate. But in times like these, I always like to remember that volatility disrupts as much as it presents opportunity. I was asked for the umpteenth time on a podcast ...
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Goodbye Friedman, Hello 2021

2021 will be a turning point for business. The rising swell we've seen for businesses to strengthen their social purpose, to build on values will become more mainstream. And if you lead a company, it will be a genuine choice you face. Which side of business history do you want ...
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2020 Was a year of real hope

2020 was a year that gave me some real hope. - Many companies stepping up to support their employees and communities;
- The environmental impact of lockdown;
- Our sudden collective appreciation of all the NHS and its staff does for us;
- How companies, universities and governments worked together at breakneck speed ...
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Leadership Just Got Harder in 2020… and we should welcome it

The table stakes on leadership just got higher in 2020. And that's a good thing.We need to make impossible balances. Impossible because they won't work for everyone. And more impossible because we've got to be sensitive to the fact that they won’t work for everyone, while still trusting in our ...
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Leadership needs to be completely different for remote. Or does it?

As much as leading is a responsibility and a privilege, it is an art and a craft. When you watch the best footballers play (RIP Diego), the ball looks like it's just an extension of their body. They are so natural and comfortable with it, it really doesn't sit apart ...
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