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 most popular date and time […]
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 a long time. What became […]
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 and constructively. Whether you’ll be […]
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 in 1968, the two phrases […]
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 for learning 3. Relevant Skills […]