Is it your job to make your employees happy?
The more self-aware among us will know how important it is to keep ourselves motivated and inspired too. But does that sentiment extend to happiness? The old adage ‘a happy worker is a productive worker’ may seem to come from another, more paternalistic age, but the idea has hardly gone out of fashion. Silicon Valley […]
Liz Truss: Turnaround leader or growth CEO?
The old leader leaves in good time and on good terms, with the organisation in good stead. It doesn’t need them to survive because they developed leadership capabilities in depth throughout their time there. The new leader is a perfect fit for the demands of the role and what the company needs to take its […]
Why growth matters
Environmental and social activists have rightly called into question the desirability of pursuing economic growth at all costs, while others have pointed out that raising GDP is a poor policy objective, because it fails to account for social quality or quality of life. Individual businesses face a concurrent critique over claims that rapid scaling frequently […]
Dealing with disengagement
Unfortunately, it’s not something you’re going to be able to avoid. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2022 report, the proportion of workers who are engaged – who thrive at work – is only 21%. Six in ten are emotionally detached (i.e. not engaged), while the remaining 19% are miserable, or actively disengaged. […]
Does working your way up the ranks make you a better leader?
New recruits couldn’t go anywhere near head office without serving time in the trenches as shop floor trainees. “There’s no substitute for that in retail,” Whiteside said, making a point to spend time in stores before starting subsequent CEO roles. It’s an approach to leadership development that became less popular over the following decades, coinciding […]
The curse of bright ideas
“We tried it before and it didn’t work.” “We just don’t have the capacity for this.” “I know it worked for [insert department/brand/business] but we’re different.” It’s one thing to hear this from front line workers, but it’s doubly bad when it comes from middle managers, those trusty lieutenants who are supposed to buy into […]
How to get other people to make better decisions
Motivation, inspiration, culture-building and alignment behind a common vision are all hugely important, but they don’t tell the whole story. A fundamental part of a leader’s job, on the most practical level, is to make decisions. These can be strategic, operational and sometimes tactical, but taken together it’s hard to overstate their importance. I challenge […]
Is analysing success more important than analysing failure?
Rather than keeping their failures quiet and focusing on their successes, entrepreneurs began parading their botched ventures and strategic missteps proudly. It was a mark of credibility, showing not only resilience (by definition; you tried again) but also that you had something to learn from. There’s a lot of wisdom behind the TED Talk glamour. […]
What CEOs can learn from military leadership
Military observers have been surprised by the brutality, but many have been equally taken aback at how poorly the supposedly mighty Russian army has performed against the Ukrainian forces, which were far weaker on paper. It reveals some general truths about leadership and strategy. Success in war is not about which side has the greater […]
How to get out of a leadership rut
Indeed, our ability to lead, to spot opportunities and add the greatest value to our businesses depends on it. You might think that leaders are the last people to need motivating, but that’s not entirely true. Don’t get me wrong. I love running my own business, and I see exactly the same fire in the […]
