Some years ago, I was advising two of the most impressive entrepreneurs in the country. They had built an amazing national brand and were going from strength to strength in terms of geographic coverage, revenue and customer numbers. But, they were having challenges managing the business now that it was so large. They explained: “We’re […]
At the helm of every great company is a great leader. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson… Home-grown heroes like Melanie Perkins, Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes… All are wildly successful, their praises sung far and wide. However, each runs a business that’s underpinned by their own unique vision. It makes one wonder… what, […]
We are relentlessly told that we should be ‘authentic’ and find our own approach to leading. The idea of emulation is almost frowned upon. But while many people will say that you need to create your own style, not copy others, the neuroscience of performance has produced some very different answers. In any domain where […]
More than ever before, we are seeing young people taking on significant leadership roles. Your employer might have put you on the fast track to leadership. Or if you’re following in the footsteps of someone like Mark Zuckerberg, you may have founded a start-up and successfully grown it. Either way, you will have likely found […]
The only standard that matters any more for leaders is world-class. Only world-class leaders can make their companies world-class and companies without this leadership excellence will inevitably fall short of being world-class themselves. So, how do you become a world-class leader? My company has spent the past two years researching the capabilities, routines and mental […]
In decades gone by, businesses sometimes set the trends for society. Fast forward to today where things move so fast that businesses are having to catch up with society. Even though most CEOs would not want to admit it, their organisations probably still look and operate far too much like a system designed for Henry Ford’s […]
It’s not always easy to take up a CEO role. It can be easier if no one liked your predecessor. It can be harder if you’re taking over from the founder and harder still if the founder is still in the business. The nature of the challenge depends somewhat on the stage at which the […]
Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen AirBnB become the largest accommodation provider with no properties, Uber become the largest taxi company with no cars and Alibaba become the largest retailer with no stock. Tesla, which is changing the rules of the game in the automotive industry, is led by someone with no industry experience […]
It’s January. Over the break, you discovered that your CEO or senior executives won’t be coming back after the holidays or if they are, they won’t be staying for long – and you’ve been selected to fix up the mess once they’re gone. How should you go about it? It depends on where your predecessor/s went wrong… […]
New technologies continue to launch in the blink of an eye meaning it isn’t always easy for business leaders to discern which will and won’t advantage their organisation. To help you identify the best tech bets for 2017, here are five guiding principles. 1. Spot the exponential curves and work out the customer value proposition within them Disruption by low-cost competitors […]
