Are you a manager of managers? If so, here’s the ultimate test of your effectiveness… If you left your role, would the group continue successfully without you? Because our job isn’t to merely get the machine running well, it’s to build the machine in such…
There’s one management behaviour that blows my mind whenever I hear about it. It’s when people tell me that their boss doesn’t routinely say hello to them. And it happens more often than you might imagine. For example, I was speaking with a team that…
Stop cold e-mailing referees and asking them to fill out a generic reference check forms! This has happened three times to me in the past month: I get a cold e-mail from an unknown HR person asking me to fill out a tedious, generic form…
Managers seem to have an almost universal problem with sophistication bias. What does this mean? Sophistication bias is where people overlook simple, but effective, solutions in favour of more complex or “sophisticated” alternatives. In every case, this creates unnecessary additional work and complexity, but in…
I find this absolutely bat shit crazy. Three comments in a row on the same LinkedIn post, written hours apart by three different people located in three different countries, working for three different organisations. They all sound much the same. And they all say much…
“You’re too busy chopping wood to sharpen the axe”. I heard Netflix founder Reed Hastings talk about this idea recently on the Guy Raz How I Built This podcast. He was talking about how – when we’re flat out at work – we often forget…
I haven’t been posting on LinkedIn much lately, as I’ve been finding it all a bit depressing. The volume of posts on LinkedIn has gone through the roof. But the quality has gone down the drain. And it appears to be driven by one thing:…
Here’s the one trick to look like a weak leader and undermine trust at the same time. Be a gossip. Because when we gossip about our colleagues or – worse – the people in our team, we: And I’m not pretending that gossip doesn’t have…
Here’s a story about two crazy French chefs cooking for Louis XIV. They’re both freaking out that they’ll get the guillotine if they stuff up their dish. One needs a lemon for the main. The other a lemon for the dessert. But there’s only one…
Imagine your leadership journey as two circles. The first represents who you truly are – your authentic self. The second represents who you believe you should – or must – be when you turn up to work. Your “professional” persona. Now imagine them in a…
“Don’t tell on others” might be the dumbest lesson we carry from childhood into the workplace. Most of us are taught when we’re young not to tell (or snitch, grass, dob etc.). This makes sense when it’s about trivial matters, but the problem is many…
If you’re not embarrassed by who you were five years ago, you’re probably not growing enough. I feel like fainting when I think about some of the misguided things I thought, said and did earlier in my career. It’s deeply uncomfortable for me to reflect…
As people use AI more, employers are being overwhelmed by a growing tidal wave of complaints, cover letters, e-mails and more. For example, a new Princeton University study quoted by The Economist shows that the average cover letter length has doubled since ChatGPT came online.…
I live in Western Australia where shark attacks are a thing. They’re rare, but the human behaviour around them is fascinating – and it’s taught me about how poorly we often deal with remote – but scary – risks. On a typical summer morning, there…
“Everybody is so change resistant” is code for “I’m not very good at leading change”. I’ve heard this a lot. I’ve said it before. But describing others as change resistant is what we say when we’ve failed to drive through a change that sticks. It’s…
Just because things worked out well, it doesn’t mean you made the right decision. A big trap in management is to judge decisions on single outcomes. We think people get the decision right when things work out well. And we think people get the decision…
We blame men for being men, workers for being workers and managers for being managers. But maybe there’s another explanation… When management doesn’t like what workers do, we often roll our eyes and think “typical workers”. And when workers don’t like what management does, they…
Here’s a thought: workplaces should be psychologically safe – but intellectually dangerous 🤔. People must feel psychologically (and physically) safe in any workplace. But at the same time, workplaces should have a strong intellectual immune response against bad ideas. This distinction sounds easy in theory,…
Want to know how your strategic planning compares to everyone else’s? I’ve been looking at the data from our Impact Society Planning Health Check tool. This free 5 minute tool lets any manager check the health of their team or organisation’s strategic planning – both…
Hoping your team hasn’t noticed the elephant in the room? Too late, they have. This is a common issue in workplaces, where managers avoid addressing a situation directly and in doing so leave an abundance of space for people to make up their own stories.…
