Too Much Time...?
As leaders, apart from “strategic thinking”, we spend much of our time dealing with people and people issues.
Something that’s become very clear to me over the years I’ve led people is that if one spends too much time discussing a particular worker, there’s potentially a problem.
It doesn’t matter whether one’s discussing face-to-face or just spending time thinking. The point is, too much time is being devoted to one person and we may not be getting the best return as it takes us away from more important strategic issues and the other people we work with.
Worse, if others perceive but there’s a problem as well, it impacts morale and reduces productivity.
One of the more unpleasant tasks of leaders is disciplining a team member who’s not “doing their bit”. Often, they’re doing the work they’re meant to (and even doing it well) but this doesn’t stop there being an issue. It just makes it more difficult to counsel them when the issue is personality rather than productivity.
Gorick Ng - a coach that I follow regularly - distinguishes between three key areas for performance which he terms the “3 Cs”:
- Competence (being able to do the job)
- Commitment: (wanting the job and wanting to do it)
- Compatibility (“fitting in” with one’s teammates and the organisational culture)
Generally, when there’s a problem, it’s usually in one of these areas.
Somebody may be committed and compatible, but not competent. This can be resolved with coaching.
Equally, they may be perfectly competent and compatible, but that “vital spark” seems to have disappeared (commitment lacking). Here, there may be a reason: were they passed over for promotion? Are they unhappy with the latest bonus or salary increment? Are they having problems at home?
Whatever happens, a properly conducted one-to-one session may highlight the problems and suggest solutions.
Finally, they may be competent and committed; they just don’t “fit in’ for whatever reason. This isn’t always something that can be resolved through coaching, although one-to-one sessions may help. The question here is: why were they hired if they didn’t fit? The answer is either that the interviewer or interviewers thought they would fit in or something else may have happened after they were hired into the team. Were they, for example, transferred from one team in which they fitted perfectly into one that was different? Is it a case of simply moving them to another team and/or manager?
Assuming these options are open, they need to be tried. Unfortunately, in some small teams or businesses the only choice is to speak to the person concerned, state the problem in the most succinct and acceptable way, and see if they wish to find a resolution. The final option is that they leave the business which then means that they have to be replaced.
At times, the team leader and/or the team may feel that the proverbial pain of the final solution is worth it.
Interestingly enough, the person concerned often knows that something’s wrong if they’re not feeling committed to or happy in the team. They just don’t know how to go about addressing the situation without a hearing. In this case reaching out to them may make all the difference.
I deliver change in markets ranging from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email.
Labels: Leadership, Teamwork
Failing to Plan?
Two countries attacked a third at the end of February 2026. The business lessons we can learn are:
- Define the goal: the purpose of doing anything is to accomplish something. In this case, there was a degree of uncertainty in what the goal was. It was separately described as: destroying that country ’s missile capability, destroying their nuclear enrichment capability (which had, apparently, being “obliterated” in 2025) and to destroy its navy.
- Without a clear goal, we can’t plan how to get there. This is somewhat like asking a builder to build us a house but not providing any plans specifying how many floors it should have, construction materials, number of rooms, fixtures and fittings and so on.
- The what/why/when/how/where/who? Some may recognise these as Rudyard Kipling’s “Six Honest Serving Men” but they help to define all parts of a strategy. Without them, we tend to flail around.
- Contingency planning: in this case, allies in the region and further afield were hit by drones targeting both military and civilian installations.
- How will we know when we’ve achieved success? A gain, without a clearly defined goal and measurable steps to achieve it, we don’t know if we’ve succeeded or not.
For someone who claimed to be one of the world’s most successful businessmen and dealmakers, it’s surprising that the head of state in question didn’t follow these steps, resulting in leadership and economic chaos.
As business leaders, our job is to set direction with clear goals to achieve our desired objective. Yes, that objective can change depending on circumstances, but with proper contingency planning, we can adjust to those changes and still achieve what we set out to do.
Our second job is to empower our people with the correct knowledge, tools, financial resources and any other that they may need to achieve that goal.
The third is to monitor progress, intervening where required to move things along.
Finally, when we “get there” we need to lead the celebrations!
I deliver change in markets ranging from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email.
Labels: Leadership, Strategy, Teamwork
"I Don’t Do Clocks…"
A contact who invigilates exams for school-age children told me that, during an exam, a student who needed to know how much time was left said “I don’t do clocks,” when the clock on the wall of the exam hall was pointed out to them.
The “boomers” are coming up to retirement or have already retired. I’m guessing that the student in question was doing at least their GCSEs and would therefore have been from the end of the “Gen. Z” era or perhaps even “Alpha” generation.
What fascinated me was that this student is clearly of “that generation” that grew up with more exposure to digital timekeeping and, possibly, don’t wear a watch as their smart phone has a clock! This tells us more about how we ‘re developing as humans rather than that the younger generation are somehow “deficient” because they can’t read a 12-hour clock.
Is this a typically “first world problem”? How many students of the same age in what are called the “developing” countries of the world are lucky enough to have a smart device in their home, let alone own an analogue (12-hour) watch?
I see plenty of jokes about how to confuse this age’s children by putting them in a room with a rotary dial phone and provide instructions how to use it in cursive writing. Yes, there’s a degree of fun or irony in such humour, but it nonetheless illustrates that society has moved on. How many of my generation would know what a “mangle” is (for those interested, it’s a device that was used to squeeze water out of clothes that had just been washed before the invention of the tumble dryer)?
Equally who knows what a “dumb waiter” is? The answer: a miniature lift that communicated between the basement kitchen and the dining room of wealthier houses “back in the day”.
Society will continue to develop with time. If it didn’t, we’d still probably be living in caves and wearing animal skins.
Yes, it’s sad to see that young people these days may not know how to use a 12-hour watch or clock, but I bet they could ring run rings round many of us on social media and ChatGPT usage!
Conclusion: understand (even if you don’t like it) that they’re different and that they have skills that “our generation” will never fully master.
Much has been said, written and discussed about the “generation gaps” present in our society. We have the “Silent Generation” (those who survived WWII), the “Baby Boomers” (those born between 1946 - 1964). After them came “Gen. X” (1965 - 1979), “Gen. Y” (1980 - 1994), “Gen. Z” (1995 - 2009), “Alpha” (2010 - 2024) and last, but not least, “Beta” (2025 - 2039). Each has its own characteristics which were the subject of two articles in February and March 2024.
I deliver change in markets ranging from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email.
Labels: Customer Care, Productivity, Social
Start As You Intend to Continue
Something my colleagues and I noticed in one of the organisations in which I worked was that, if somebody was “difficult” during the onboarding process, they were likely to be difficult throughout the relationship.
I can’t say if this was a case of “correlation” as opposed to “causation”, but what I can say is that we very often found this to be the case.
We all understand that different organisations have their own “way of doing things” and that, if we really wish to deal with them then we have no choice but to accept. There may become a point in time, though, when the phrase “enough is enough” springs to mind when we realise that the amount of effort involved to begin or continue that relationship is simply not worth the returns.
This applies whether one is the organisation “onboarding” someone or the one being “onboarded”.
Sometimes, we may have no choice, especially if dealing with monopoly providers, governments or other regulatory bodies on whom we depend for the continuation of our business or some service that no other organisation can provide. There have come points in time, though, when we decided in various organisations in which I worked that it was better to terminate the relationship than face the increasing costs of dealing with that counterparty.
Everybody needs their “bureaucracy”, especially where processing high volumes of material to deliver uniform services across a large body of customers. In the end though, such complexity costs the organisation in terms of money and resources to manage it as well as its clients or counter parties. At a time when business conditions are becoming increasingly challenging there’s a risk that we may lose business to bureaucracy. As business leaders, we need, where possible, to ensure that our process it:
- Result in the service we say they should.
- Are easy to use.
- Provide an enjoyable if not fun experience.
Doing this will result in increased productivity from our own people as well as growing and repeat customer satisfaction.
I deliver change in markets ranging from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email.
Labels: Customer Care, Leadership, Productivity, Selling, Teamwork
“We Can’t Afford to Lose…”
Do you have one of those “amazing people” who just seems to know everything, do it all, work long hours, never say no to anything, is vital to the business?
If so, how much falls on their shoulders?
How “vital” are they to the organisation in terms of their institutional knowledge, their customer knowledge, the trust that organisation leaders place in them, being a “backbone” of their function or the organisation?
If you can name someone like this in your organisation, you have a potential leadership issue coming up. This doesn’t mean there’s competition for the top slot (far from it!) The problem is that this person may be rapidly burning out and will leave at the worst possible time simply because they can’t “take any more”.
Laurie DeSalvo suggests several remedies in LinkedIn to make sure that:
The organisation retains that person and their knowledge/abilities.
Reduce the number of hours they work.
Build relief into the team.
Give that person space to lead instead of always “firefighting”.
Reduce risk.
Improve decision-making.
If leaders are “drowning”, they don’t need extra “coaching” or to be told to “prioritise better”, let alone “push more for just a little longer”. DeSalvo points out that the descriptions given above are not about performance, they’re about capacity. To quote the famous line from the film Avatar, “It is hard to fill a cup which is already full.”
As leaders, it’s our job to spot these “critical people” and to ensure they have the real support that they need. Yes, there’s a cost in hiring an additional person to support them. The question to ask, however, is, “if we don’t do this now and pay the price, what will the cost be to us if this person leaves?”
Different people have different limits; as leaders, we need to be able to spot them.
I deliver change in markets ranging from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email.
Labels: Leadership, Productivity, Teamwork
I Don’t Understand What You Do
This was the phrase a recruitment agent (or “headhunter”) used with me once.
Thanks to my varied international leadership background, I didn’t fit into any one neat little “box” that they could relate to. I’d run retail banking operations, middle office operations, trade finance operations, worked in HR and also as a corporate lending manager. I’d overseen correspondent banking relationships for Asia and worked in an investment bank on the client management team. Before all that, I’d been a ships agent in the South of France!
I’d worked in nine different countries, each with its own separate culture leading teams there. To be honest, I don’t think these poor people had ever encountered anyone with the same experience before!
No wonder they were confused!
At the time I thought it was their job to work out what I was good at and could offer to others.
No.
After having run countless CV writing and interview sessions where I tell my delegates that quite often, they have to “make it easy to understand them”, I realised that I’d failed to understand where the recruiting agent was coming from. Their job was to match up the right candidate with the right job.
What they needed from me was what I felt would be the right job. I had plenty of transferable skills, but people want to know where those skills will help them.
I don’t think any “headhunter” ever refused to meet me (some even called me out of the blue!) but I understand now why they found it difficult to “place” me. I needed to help them understand what I could do better. That was on me and I didn’t realise it at the time.
As people go through either the job hunting or interviewing process (either as an interview or interviewer) we fail to understand the other person’s position. Interviewers want to know, quite simply, whether we will help their organisation succeed in its goals and it’s up to us to understand the organisation, the industry in which it operates and its goals through diligent research. Knowing this, it’s far easier to relate our past experience and our current skills to what the employer may need in our view.
One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given by one of my university tutors was, “Always assume that the person reading your essay is an idiot,” he then added with a grin, “especially if it’s me!”
Those words have stuck with me ever since. He didn’t mean that I should assume I was more intelligent than anyone else but rather that sometimes people think in different ways and need help understanding another person.
I now understand better where I went wrong and can help others overcome this in their job searches or when they’re interviewing others. It’s taken time but I can now pass that hard-learned lesson onto others.
I deliver change in markets ranging from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email.
Labels: Career, Selling, Strategy
My Word is my Bond
In the “Old Days”, deals were sealed with a handshake. If you didn’t do what you said you would do when you said you would do it and at the price you had agreed, you quickly earned a reputation of an unreliable business partner.
Fast forward to the modern era of contracts where now no business deal can be sealed without a contract equal in thickness to the Encyclopaedia Britannica or some other weighty volume. Although these days we have the advantage of “soft copies” on computers, they must nevertheless be validated and may often still be printed out.
Contracts aside, as business owners and leaders, we undertake to do certain things for others: our staff, our business partners, our friends and family. Although these aren’t “written agreements”, and certainly can’t be enforced in a court of law, when we say that we’ll do something for someone, we’re undertaking something and building an expectation that we can be relied upon to do it.
Too often, however, the excuses start here: “It was a bad day for me!”, “I was busy.” (a favourite against which there is no real argument in theory), “We had an emergency.” (yes, these happen, but did we contact the other person to say it had happened and that we’d be delayed?) or “X, Y or Z got in the way).
In the case of verbal undertakings, our word is still our bond and people judge us on whether we keep our promises or not. There are certain individuals whom I have classified as “unreliable” and “easily distracted”. In fact, in the latter case, I know that I can manipulate them simply by creating a “distraction” if I want them to forget that I’ve undertaken something for them!
Not to deliver on one’s undertakings is, in some people’s opinion, an egregious illustration of “moral bankruptcy”. Everyone understands that emergencies can and do arise, or that something may distract us, but we still need to remember that we’ve undertaken to do something for someone by a certain time and that, if we find ourselves unable to do it because of unforeseen and uncontrollable external circumstances that have suddenly risen, the least we can do is contact the other person to explain the situation and that we’ll get back on it.
If we find that people start to avoid us, not deal with us or not be prepared to provide references for us, this could be the reason. For some, “once is enough”; others may be more patient but still after one or two more instances of failure to deliver, they’ll label that person as “unreliable”.
With all the alternatives out there, keeping our “word” is more important than ever.
I deliver change in markets ranging from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email.
Labels: Leadership, Productivity, Social
