The coaching industry is awash with pseudo-Sineks* telling you to Start With Why. The challenge is that most of them don’t tell you anything of substance beyond the Why. It’s as if the job’s done once you’ve got your Why. And there’s good reason for that. It’s a lot easier to sell people on a vision than to sell them on the reality of what it takes to get it done. In my books, selling that way as they do is intellectual dishonesty at best, verging on fraud at…

So many people today have swallowed the values pill and say that companies *need* a clear set of positive values to succeed. Especially on the speaking or coaching circuit. Bullshit. Companies have succeeded without articulating any values. Some with a set of insidious (and not articulated) values. Heck, some have grown profitable off the back of killing kids in countries where tobacco laws are more lax. Or selling weapons to dictators. No, I look at it like the conversation our parents has had…

I’m pretty obsessed in the work world about companies having and living a set of heart-felt, positive values. And I devote most of my work to helping companies succeed in a way that is aligned with those values. So I’m delighted to see the increasing focus on what company values mean to its employees, and how it treats them. Too right! But less is said about the values that people need to demonstrate to the company that employs them. And that to me makes it a very asymmetrical relationship.…

Leaders are encouraged to not be afraid of failure. And I get this. To an extent. It’s rare that something great is created without the risk of failure. And bravery is knowing there is a risk of failure in doing something great, yet going ahead and doing it. But foolhardiness is to do it without giving serious consideration to managing the risk. And wastefulness is not to learn from it if it goes wrong. But consider how your team would feel about following you from one failure to the next?…

Just back from my extended holiday (hence the lack of posts this week!) to pick up my eldest son’s GCSE results. The new new GCSE system (I was O levels!). I’m really chuffed with how he’s done. But it prompted me to look at some of my old school and uni notes, and I was surprised at what turned up. Philosophy was part of my degree, and keeps bringing up surprises at work where I least expect them to be. I wrote recently about my strong belief in fostering ideas in teams (https://valuesledbusiness.com/blogs/blog/bsbt/your-team-must-be-able-to-disagree-with-you/),…

If you want your business to make a difference, make sure it makes money. This is not about “me first”, which I abhor and have written about elsewhere (https://valuesledbusiness.com/blogs/blog/bsbt/the-me-economy/). It is about ensuring that your business is in a position to serve the causes it cares about. I’ve seen analogies comparing businesses with people. Those individuals who have (worthily in my view) abstained from personal wealth in order to dedicate their lives to the…

The best leaders I’ve known have always intimately got that being a leader is more of a role that they play than an hierarchical position in which they sit. Meaning that they don’t lord over you. They don’t assume that they have all the right answers. They don’t expect you to do everything they say simply because they said it. They don’t expect you to subsume your power of independent thought into theirs. They understand that they have a responsibility to agree or create…