Avoiding Ambushes: Leading Change Effectively
In private equity-backed businesses, change isn’t just a part of the job — it is the job. Delivering a value creation plan inevitably requires rapid evolution: new systems, restructured teams, revised strategies, and different ways of working. The challenge isn’t whether change is necessary — it’s how to execute it in a way that sticks.…
Discipline Wins: How Leading Measures Drive Performance
When I was going through Royal Marines training, the Physical Training Instructors had a mantra: “Give 100%, trust the process.” There was no talk of passing the Commando Course. No discussion about the final test or what it would feel like to wear the green beret. Just relentless focus on the next hill sprint, the…
Six Simple Steps to Solving Problems
Last week, I wrote an article on ‘double-loop learning’ which explained how the Royal Marines relearnt how to shoot. This week, I want to take double-loop learning one step further and provide you with a simple but very effective tool for solving problems. The aim of this article is to give you a very simple…
Why did the Royal Marines relearn how to shoot?
In this article, I am going to introduce the concept of double-loop learning, which I was taught by Damian Hughes during the Barefoot Coaching course. I hope to be able to bring it to life using a couple of examples – one in a personal and one in an organisational context. Why do you need…
Why do you need to check that standards are in place?
When I am struggling to think of something to write about, I normally find some inspiration from what’s happened over the past couple of weeks. In this short article, I am going to link the leadership behaviour of ‘checking standards’ to food poisoning… My wife and I decided to take a couple of nights away…
Do you have a balance of Leading and Lagging Key Performance Indicators?
‘What gets measured gets done’. It is an old expression but it still carries a lot of weight in the world of business. If you can measure something, you can work on it and you can improve it. The problems come when you measure the wrong thing, which sounds like an amateur mistake but is…
Why starting your day by opening your emails destroys productivity…
The first thing that many of us do when we get into the office, or even when we wake up, is to check our emails. In this short article, I’m going to explain why this is so damaging to your productivity. For many people, the morning is their most productive time of day. This is…
Are you Sharpening the Axe?
‘Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe’ Abraham Lincoln There are broadly speaking two types of activity that we spend time focussing on. There are the things that you need to do in order to get the job done today. At work, these…
Designing Culture – Netflix Case Study
Netflix is a Global Internet TV Network with 70 million members broadcasting in 190 countries. They have been phenomenally successful evolving a business model that started out as ‘online film rental’ to their current subscription based streaming service. They are well known for their success with their revenues in 2015 reaching $5.5bn. What is perhaps…
3 Simple Steps to Improve your Meetings
Earlier this week, I read that AOL CEO Tim Armstrong is ‘on a quest to cut back on meetings’. http://qz.com/571436/tim-armstrong-is-on-a-quest-to-cut-back-on-meetings-at-aol/ The article talks about Tim’s efforts to ‘boost company culture and efficiency by discouraging unnecessary – and unnecessarily long – internal meetings’. Armstrong has proposed that meetings should default to 30 minutes instead of an…
What does a ‘Perfect Day’ look like?
Over the past few years, a number of people have asked me what sort of tools and techniques I use to best prepare myself to have a successful and productive day. This blog post is simply an explanation of what I do to make sure that I do everything that I need to do in…
If you are really busy then STOP – take five minutes to read this…
If you ask someone ‘how they are?’ there is a good chance that you will be met with a response that in some way alludes to how ‘busy’ they are. The world today is filled with choice and opportunities. Every single day we are presented with hundreds of opportunities, forks in the road which present…
The Trust Equation
What is ‘The Trust Equation’? The Trust Equation was first introduced in 2000 by David Maister in his book, ‘The Trusted Advisor’. I was first introduced to this concept by Greig Walker whilst working with him at Urenco. In this short article, I am going to explain the trust equation and how it is applicable…
Breaking the Silo Mentality?
Since leaving the Royal Marines, I have spent three years in industry and experienced the leadership, culture and working environment of a number of companies. One thing that has always struck me is the discussion about the ‘silo mentality’. I have heard so many people talk about it that I started to think it was…
