A Retinal Retrospective
In 2023 I received what for me could be called a major “reality check”.
Whilst having dinner with friends and trying to dislodge a piece of food stuck between my teeth with a toothpick, I suffered a detached retina. For anyone who doesn’t know, this is when the layer of cells responsible for your sight literally “peels off” the back of the eyeball, releasing blood into the liquid inside the eyeball. For me, it was like somebody had poured treacle into my eyeball and my vision became blurry.
One month later I finally managed to get an appointment with an eye specialist who took one look at me and immediately called their colleagues at the local hospital to schedule a full checkup and surgery. Apparently, I was on the point of losing sight in my right eye!
The next day I was examined at the hospital, taken straight up to a ward and operated on early the following morning. The surgery was a success but they did warn me that at my age, it was highly likely that a cataract would form. This, however, could be treated with a standard lens replacement operation.
True to their word, the cataract did form and for me it was like looking through a heavily frosted glass window if I looked out of my right eye only. After the surgery, the vision in my right eye was just short of “perfect”!
The reason I describe this as a “wake up call” was that it showed me how dependent I was on having good eyesight. I drive, enjoy reading and watching films and I’m what people might call a “visual” person. It terrified me to think that all this could have disappeared if the doctors hadn’t seen me in time. Yes, it was only one eye, but losing the site in that eye (which was my “dominant” one) would have been a serious inconvenience for me.
However, the ending was a happy one, I can see almost perfectly and even now, three years after the operation for the detached retina and two years after the one for the cataract, I still sometimes forget to put on my glasses when I leave the house. This just shows the incredible skill of the surgeons who operated on me.
Yes, I’m more or less back to “normal”, but I now take my eyesight and hearing a lot more seriously and attend “religiously” all scheduled health checkups and appointments that my age requires.
Question: what would you do if you were deprived of one of your senses? How would it impact your life, family and business? Are you making sure it doesn’t happen? More to the point, apply this to your team: is there that “vital” person with whom you can’t do without? What about buyers? If you lost business from one, would that bring down your business?
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: Crisis Management, Customer Care, Leadership, Strategy, Teamwork
iPads Over the Years
Since 2011, I’ve had four different iPads.
I started in 2011 with the 9” iPad. To be honest, I love my gadgets and this was a great-looking gadget to try out. That said, I quickly became “hooked” on the potential this device offered for portable computing rather than lugging around a laptop.
In something like 2016 or so I bought the iPad 13” when it first came out in the 1TB only version. Having more “Screen Real Estate” was great but, being the first 13“ iPad, it weighed a ton and was extremely difficult to hold in one hand for more than about five minutes.
So later on, I naturally downsized to the iPad 11”! It seemed at the time like the ideal compromise between the heavy and large 13” version and carrying a laptop. This was also the first iPad I combined with a touchpad keyboard for greater flexibility (and let me tell you now, whatever they say about the price, the iPad “Magic Keyboard” is a dream to use).
You’d have thought that by now I’d finally have found my “Goldilocks iPad”.
Far from it.
I still felt that the 11” version was too heavy to hold for long periods of time.
No guesses as to what happened next: I bought the updated iPad Mini (V.7) - without cellular - when it came out and have been using that since 2024.
I have to admit this is the most flexible iPad I’ve ever owned. It’s highly portable (I can just squeeze it into a trouser pocket, although it looks slightly peculiar!) It’s light and does most of what I need it to which is essentially content consumption, internet browsing and a bit of email. I can also use it to read/sign documents with my Apple Pencil and I’m generally very happy with it.
Now, whilst it’s light and highly portable, it still has its downsides. For some strange reason, Apple saw fit not to include Face ID in the iPad Mini package. Quite why I don’t know as I don’t think this would have taken anything away from it. It’s larger cousins have it, but that was Apple‘s decision.
Another compromise I’ve had to make is that at 8.3 inches, the “screen real estate” is lacking and therefore I’m usually forced to “zoom in” to be able to read certain sizes of text. It also makes working with drop-down menus far more “fiddly” and I often end up hitting the wrong choice.
Battery life is also compromised as, with a smaller device, one naturally has a smaller battery. Whether it’s my usage or something else, I've noticed that the battery has already lost something like 13% of capacity in about 1.5 years of use (I also have the “charge limit” set to 80% to preserve battery life, so I can’t charge beyond this amount which means I’ll obviously get shorter battery life). As I’m usually moving between home and office, topping up the battery isn’t a problem: I just have to do it more often. What this means in practical terms is that if, say, I go on a trip, I need a power bank with me and on a long flight from Asia to the UK (roughly 13 - 14 hours), I’ll probably charge the iPad at least once from the in-aircraft power system.
As a content consumption device, however, it’s without equal in my eyes. Instead of carrying a laptop, iPad and Kindle reader, I can now manage on extended business travel (anything over five days) with my laptop and iPad Mini which doubles as a Kindle with the Kindle app installed.
It’ll also handle simple emailing with its soft keyboard, although the latter tends to take up a lot of screen space and I find I constantly have to use the “remove keyboard" button to check what I’ve actually typed. This is easily fixed by using any of the numerous bluetooth keyboards out there that can be connected to the iPad. An even simpler solution is to use the voice recognition capability of the device to dictate emails and reports as I did to start this article!
The one thing none of the iPads I’ve earned can do is completely replace a laptop. They can do a lot of “at a pinch“ work (like reading and sending a quick response to an email, reading/signing a document and creating a simple Word or Excel or Powerpoint document) but for people like me who are heavy users of Microsoft office programs, the simple formatting and creative solutions offered on the iPad simply don’t meet my needs. The odd edit? Yes. Creating something with animations, etc? No.
For those, I’ll still turn to my trusty MacBook - and that's probably just what Apple want...
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: Productivity
A Marketing Miss?
We’ve been acting (on behalf of the elderly owner) as “palliative carers” for an elderly dog (13 years plus) who recently passed away.
She’d been taking a pharmacy-full of pills and was also prescribed three different tonics for other different ailments. In the end, we realised these were doing little more than prolong her (poor quality) life and that was even if she’d take them.
For the meds that were in pill form, there wasn’t usually a problem in crushing them up and mixing them in with her food. However, they had to be crushed up very finely. If you just put the pill in whole, she wouldn’t eat!
The problem came with the tonics. They were brown in colour, so discoloured the food . They also had a distinctive smell. If dog spotted that they’d been added to the food, she wouldn’t eat it.
I know that often with small children (and even some adults) “nasty tasting medicine” isn’t something we enjoy taking. The pharma companies have made efforts to disguise unpleasant tastes or smells without affect affecting the healing properties of the medication.
My question is, “Why can’t we do the same for animals?” Their sense of smell is far superior to that of humans, so it’s easy for them to detect a foreign object in their daily meal. The stronger the smell, the less likely they are to eat the food it’s being mixed with unless they’re really hungry.
There are those who’d say that it’s not worth making such an effort for animals, but when we think about the place they occupy in our lives, anything that makes it easier to alleviate their suffering is surely a good thing.
How many times have we encountered situations in our business where a simple change to a product or service makes it far more acceptable (and even desirable) to customers? At times perhaps the cost of making that small improvement isn’t worth it and that’s fine. But if a small cost is offset by a huge increase in let’s call it “acceptability”, it’s worth it.
Is our business “missing a trick” because someone thinks it’s “not worth it”?
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, Selling
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
