Today’s leadership newsletter will make you take the time to analyse and your improve leadership skills.
It makes my day when I receive feedback on the newsletters, I will always invite replies to my newsletters, to discuss the topic, and see where you have rolled something out or where you might be struggling and need a quick pointer.
Since the turn of the year, there has been a theme of replies and they can be bucketed as:
How Do I Know If I’m On Thin Ice As A Leader?
Although each environment is slightly different; there are common themes that come up and there should be a series of warning signs you’ll spot or worryingly you could be blind to.
From experiences here is a breakdown of the standard signs:
Performance
Poor company performance
Poor performance from direct reports
Bad decisions or poorly timed decisions leads to poor performance
Communications
Waiting for everyone else to catch you up on the important updates
When you are days behind in communications (email, slack etc) and it impacts how the business operates
Offbeat
When you are not in the same rhythm as the company
When decisions drive larger heartbeats jumps and is like a shock wave through the business
Stagnation
Status quo from your team (if department lead)
Projects and product(s) stagnate from decisions or lack of clarity
Trust
Lack of trust among your colleagues
Being uninvited / removed from meetings
Feedback
More feedback from colleagues
No feedback from colleagues and direct reports
Discipline
HR issues and common HR issues
Team members misbehave as they have seen others being rewarded for these behaviours in previous promotions
Crisis Mode
Everything seems to be the highest stake meeting
Everything is urgent or a crisis
Leaders Duty
There is often a blend of the eight themes above, most often leaders are undone by their miscommunication and the lack of clarity and repetition of their important decisions. It is the Leadership Team’s duty to address the misfiring of the teams below them and build trust between internal customers and external customers constantly.
Leadership IS
Leadership is incredibly challenging, and making the right and smart long-term decisions comes under the microscope of the business frequently especially the larger the business is, the more investors, advisors and shareholders evaluate you, one shift in the market and you will be under fire.
Your Decisions To Delivery Hole
In business leadership roles, there are thousands of ‘micro-decisions’ you make every day as a leader, you make what feels like small decisions and your business then gives them inflated weight, you are often judged on bad decisions part of your core team makes and frequently the disconnection between your leadership team and their department and team heads cause big directional shifts.
AUDIT TIME!
It is how you understand and improve:
What is happening (not just the numbers – this is issue number one of bad leadership)
The behaviours of you and the teams below you – if key individuals are causing the problems or allowing bad behaviours you will need to make hard decisions of keeping and improving them quickly or removing them to ensure improvements
How you got to this situation as a timeline is critical to turning the problems around and addressing the majority of the issues
Most leaders do not dedicate the time and then the resources to address the issues and core traits within the business, this is what makes the top 10% of leaders. Move into the top 10% and address the issues and audit performance of the business, the teams and the people. Get under the skin and inside the culture of the business to drive positive change within the business.
This week’s focus action is to:
Short Term: Dedicate the time to audit what is happening and not happening within the business and in your leadership
Mid Term: Create an action committee from around you and your trusted team members to create the next steps and hold everyone accountable
Long Term: Admit things were not perfect and present the actions under the 5 pillars you are changing and why these are changing
Have a great week stepping up and being the leader you want to be and need to be, I will land in your inbox next week
Dear leaders, Happy New Year. Thank you for your ongoing support and for reading Leaders Letters into 2024.
It’s the first week of January, so you are likely looking ahead, some of you will be full of optimism, and others will be underprepared and dreading another round of annual planning and re-forecasting.
I am keen to help you get a leg up for the year ahead and help you look out for eight big shifts on the horizon that will end up impacting you at some point in the next 12 months.
Temu is the Chinese app that is top of the app stores and has super low prices for thousands of SKUs taking weeks to be delivered.
App Store Dominance: Dominating the app stores in Q4 and starting to dominate search engine results since April (2023) – this has sent shockwaves through competitors
Never-ending Choice – some say this is good and most experts will inform you that choice is a bad thing and humans hate it – in Temu’s case it driving sales and leveraging what other Chinese apps and games are built on, increasing time spent means more affinity with the app and their products
App Power: Forcing downloads of their app – Temu has worked out the best experience is on the app and the more information it can consume and tweak their targeting to you
Non-Obvious Strategic Moves: Going against the well-known rule – Low-quality product’s long wait times are not putting off shoppers looking for a bargain and users are said to be spending 22+ minutes per day on their app
The Power Of Paid Demand: Temu have 265k paid keywords (in the UK alone – this is a tactic very few retailers use) and that is increasing – they are taking the paid acquisition page out of TikTok’s playbook and overspending to drive the brand awareness and mass adoption.
The Next UI – Search Vs Chat Vs New
Interface Issues: If you have used a good AI tool you will know the problem is the interface and understanding how to use prompts properly – prompts are hard to learn and iterate on until you get exactly what you want, this is the ongoing challenge for OpenAI and Anthropic Claude and Google’s BARD and will continue this year. One of the stand-out opportunities for these companies is to change the interface we interact with and make it easier to be guided towards the right answer.
The New & The Next UI: The next UI (user interface) is going to evolve over the next 12 months, chat is a tricky UI (yes, we use it all the time but many of us dislike it and most chat interfaces are only as good as the response) as we have had years of a search engine of questions or queries and then a list of links (and in recent times multiple rich media results) and then we make our minds up. We have entered the “answer engine” stage with chatGPT and competitors of asking questions or entering prompts and we are supplied the answer and with a creative output, the better the prompt the better the end result.
Chat and chatbots have been so bad for so long many will just let it go until we have a different interface despite everyone using the same style of chat and answer
The Biggest Google Issue For Years: This is the battle to win the next big evolution is on and we are going to either default to what we know Google or make the shift to an app. Expect the standard user to slowly move away from the traditional Google question and links (importantly with ads) to a Q& definitive A approach
Voice & AI: Voice search and voice navigation (talk to the device or app and it will take you to where you want to go exactly and ask if you would want to download, ‘want-to-buy’ or ‘want-to-start’ a training session etc) are going to continue to improve as it will be natural to have conversations with AI’s and what many will find is that AI is less judging than a human colleague – this could see a shift towards voice and conversation with AI rather than just refining search queries
Slow Adoption = Opportunity: We are going to land in a place where I guestimate 10% of users will adopt the new interface and others will flirt between the two – expect this to skew results, to influence costs (especially increasing budgets around paid media spends) and confuse many in-house teams.
Google vs ChatGPT (vs Microsoft)
Site, App, SuperApp or OS – this is going to be the four-tier battle that will come to the forefront. Many experts are predicting webpages are going to be less important and we need to shift towards a more fluid experience. Something to question: Will an app be enough (will customers want to download the app and use it exclusively?) to answer all of the questions and expectations we will adopt from using new interfaces? Even an app with the capabilities of running a local and personalised LLM be good enough versus what new technology will unlock? I predict OpenAI and its competitors will have to go for a super-app approach to control UX and influence the big change that is due. I suspect it is likely for OpenAI and competitors to create an OS (away from an open Android OS) that runs on a set of their own devices. This is already in the rumour mill and I suspect this will appeal to innovators and early adopters upon launch and many years after that for the early majority to even consider it.
Google AI Friend Or Foe: Google has to go all in on AI and already has across many of its products (across the Google Workspace into docs, sheets and Gmail etc) – Google will have to lock down Android and its core experience on search to keep its dominance. Will Google allow its company to lose any market share across its other business areas to cement its core (search) or will it have to please advertisers in another way to drive search demand and keep driving up their auctions
Super-App? A question to consider: Is this the fight for the Western super-app (like WeChat in China) – the app that becomes where you start everything? We are likely to see strategic pushes by these new companies looking to own the majority of your actions and these AI assistants will likely be the natural step
OpenAI Dramas: Despite the CEO firing drama of Q4 at OpenAI, Sam Altman has hundreds of disciples who are fully brought into his approach to driving AI and winning the AI market. Keep an eye on the acceleration in and around OpenAI and their ability to keep users. The struggle with OpenAI is keeping DAU (daily active users) and ensuring they make their interfaces more user-friendly and keep being the integration partner of choice
Enter Apple AI: Do not discount Apple’s ability to win in the AI arms race, they have invested huge amounts of money in acquisitions and investments into AI, they have the demand and desirable products and can integrate into their OS – Siri was a terrible product but can be easily replaced and updated in one OS update. This is also where Amazon has the ability to go further and offer more AI features away from AWS and shopping. Core businesses will be disrupted by huge innovation in AI
If you have struggled to get into AI and chatbot, the Microsoft copilot app (iOS // Android) is a great way to transition into using AI and answer engines. I also recommend using perplexity, it is a modern answer engine that works similarly to Google without the clutter.
Death Of Cookies
Cookie Crumbling: Cookies are a vital cog in the internet machine, this year they are due to be sunsetted by the largest tech firms. Cookies help:
track the success of marketing and sales campaigns,
target your core customers (on and off-site)
keep customers logged into your site and keep your site transactions and interactions secure.
With these being removed and replaced we are going to see a huge shift in understanding how users flow in and around your products.
Google’s Big Bet: Google has tried to step away from cookies for years and has struggled to create a replacement that is fit for its dominant advertising machine. If Google struggle to replace effectively it will send shockwaves through its auction ad product and all of the millions of merchants who use and rely on its services
Truly Private Browsing? Apple has already rolled out private browsing protection from cookies, we will see the battle between large tech firms and advertising companies on their approach and attempt to implement their version onto their customers.
Mindful Transactions: Cookies have been critical for years around tracking customer purchases and repeat purchases, many companies are having to think about removing their reliance on third-party cookies and data solutions while creating a zero and first-party solution. This will mean less companies should know about your transactions and create more secure personal data based on your email or unique identifier
New Tech: When there are big shifts there are brand new tech providers that are born and improve the experience of merchants and customers. Are you in a place where you can be a tech provider or join with new tech to get a leg up over competitors?
App Stores
Unbundling: App Stores are about to be unbundled and the belief is there will be an opportunity for other app stores, this is going to be increasingly hard to happen, why? The canonical stores (Apple Appstore and Google’s Android store) will win, they have the trust, they are the default and new doesn’t mean better. There is a – but, it will be interesting to see how the gaming industry changes its approach and how it can leverage its audience away from app stores taking a commission cut
Spread Too Thin? Companies and agencies will have to decide how thinly to spread their app, more distribution isn’t always better and will misdirect many resources. Most app recommendations still come from word-of-mouth recommendations – this is still going to be critical for winning app downloads
Competition = Investment: Apple and Google will have to invest in better app stores, better features, better discovery (organic and paid), better commission cuts and tailored recommendations where others will struggle to keep up or rethink what the app should be versus what it is
Resource Battles: Epic and other well-known companies have pushed for this change but will they have the resources to fight against these big incumbents and push other alternatives while still building great products – this is a second and third-order effect that seems to be lost in the years of fighting
Optionality Can Be Worse: Companies and their apps don’t win by more options, many companies may struggle to understand this and despite the tax in both app stores, fragmentation will lead to pricing varying and different deals leading to harder-to-track successes and making it harder for financial tracking and forecasting
Return To Office – Return To Hybrid
Poor Quality Mandates: 2023 saw a huge shift in return to the office mandates, with many driving employees back in 4 days a week, some back to 5 and it is causing real issues for many employees. We will see the mandates changing and some businesses embracing hybrid to compete with their rivals and offering some teams mostly remote
Reonboarding Wins: Most companies never re-onboarded their employees into the office when it was RTO, this was a big mistake and many are paying the price for it. An important step will be for companies to come together for the best outcomes for performance and their culture is to re-onboard their teams and decide what their office is for and what good and bad behaviours are. Mandating returns and reprimanding employees for missing their third day in the office isn’t going to improve work and performance it’s going to disengage and become a sticking point throughout teams and their departments. Expect more demands and explanations from teams if you have not clearly defined what the office is for and why attendance is so important.
“Productivity Paranoia”: What employees want is a safe place to work and many offices have become surveillance-based environments where their bosses are policing them and this is not the environment for anyone to thrive. Expect real kickback on poor quality offices and bad people managers who demand in-office attendance when it is impacting delivery. Management teams and HR departments will continue to score low ENPS and trust levels if how we communicate and guide employees back to the office and around hybrid Something to keep in mind, RTO will continue across more large companies and while hybrid is still in its infancy, if you would like an advantage on the competition: improve the office setting (think about how you would reshape the office) and not default to the old ways of working
Remote To Hybird: The Remote Only Approach will be rethought by many companies that went fully remote and have not seen the bump in performance. We have heard several firms who went fully remote open offices again and this is a trend to expect to continue. Remote configuration is hard if you have not dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s on it.
Bad Policies & Meeting Free: Friend of Focus and Leaders Letter Bruce Daisley offered a free and very insightful report for work in 2024 – meeting free days is something many companies are trialling and without full training of what is a meeting, what success looks like and the actions need to be taken many businesses are just pushing more back to backs and low-quality peer to peer time. Unfortunately company culture either rewards or controls poor work time. Expect AI to either help or hinder with this being AI assistant, taking fully automated notes but not being able to cut through the noise and the same loud colleagues being rewarded by AI analytics within meetings
CMO Woes: In Q4 alone we saw a large number of CMOs relieved of their duties, this is a trend that has picked up momentum and many CMO roles are being consumed or rolled into other leadership roles. Expect CMOs from across the spectrum to move around frequently.
Fractional C-Suite Members: There has been a movement towards fractional members of the leadership team, which often means an executive spread across a few clients and working on nominated days. This trend is typical across smaller companies, scaleups and startups, what this means is many companies are going to battle keeping leaders who will want to move towards a more flexible model or request to drop down to fewer days a week. I have personally seen and experienced Fractional leadership working, there have to be strict guide-rails and deep trust between discipline and between leaders otherwise it can become fractional vs full-time leadership.
Musical Chairs: We will likely see CEOs and founders moved around this year, many founders will be removed from their companies as they struggle with the evolving landscape and CEOs will start to move on from companies that are perceived as sinking ships, many will struggle to understand the vast shift in industries and not have the leadership skills to bring their company and their people along on their journey
AI Demands Vs CPO: We will see similarities in C-suite roles that are not seen to add to the performance and drive the business forward. In some companies, I can see CPOs being relieved of their duties as products will be all chasing after AI features and many will come up a dud and be copied
Leaner C-Suite Vs Expanded C-Suite: Speaking to several CEOs at the end of 2023, there was a feeling that with the changing landscape and large-scale layoffs, the C-suite is expected to become leaner and less bloat. CEOs have always known there are tiers (typically unspoken) across leadership teams (potentially could look like tier 1 CEO – COO – CFO, tier 2 with CTO – CIO – CPO and tier 3 CMO – CHRO) and will be looking to roll up responsibilities from lower tiers into higher tiers. For others, they will be looking to expand out their C-Suites and add more under the C-Suite title. The C-suite’s performance and leadership will be under the highest scrutiny and expect leadership teams to change regularly over the next 18 months.
Merger, Acquisitions & Closures
Nose Dive: The price of some companies will dramatically drop this year and result in many potential acquisitions or in some cases when the valuation is too low they may need to. We saw a number of end-of-year acquisitions and many companies rescued by deals, we should expect the same throughout this year
VC Winter: Continued VC winter and dampening of investments will mean many companies will have to look for untraditional survival tactics and look for investments from many different sources – this will have a big ripple on startups and even large companies needing to work through mergers, acquisitions or attempts to drive closures of their competitors
Big Deals: There are many rumours of large companies looking to acquire or be acquired. Disney has been rumoured to be up for sale or looking to make large acquisitions. We will likely see underperforming companies looking to sell or acquire adjacent competitors to avoid regulators reviewing the acquisitions.
Mergers: Something that is not discussed as often as acquisitions is mergers, mergers will be a lifeline for many companies this year and will see a number of agencies and platforms look to merge and reduce headcount to save the business.
Well-Placed PE: PE is going hard into well-negotiated acquisitions and creating many lean companies. PE might be the only option for many companies and will be unaware of the new demands PE creates.
Have a great week and I’ll land back in your inbox on Monday morning.
Thanks,
Danny Denhard
Become A Better Leader
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Dear leaders, each year I make recommendations for the roles you will want to hire for the next 12 to 24 months. These are to help leaders think differently or zoom out and consider the broader landscape to improve performance.
2023 has been known as the ‘year of efficiency’ from large businesses and the VC and PE worlds, and I predict 2024 is going to be seen as the ‘year of performance’.
Therefore a performance theme is running through this year’s predictions.
I have broken the ‘what’ of the role and the ‘why’ of the role with some commentary to give you a little more context for success.
The Recommended Roles For Success In 2024
The AI Compliance Officer (Internal)
What? A dedicated compliance officer concentrates on AI’s good and bad uses within and around your company.
Why? To help steer your business from what is safe and productive and be proactive in reducing risks and bad use cases of AI and LLMs.
What to be aware of is the rush that many companies had to create their own AI feature, there is likely already damage been done and the busy CPO or CTO may night have protected the business as much as an AI compliance would. Like with many tools like Dropbox, Slack team members are already installing and bringing in the tools to their work and their teams, meaning they are using and sharing data with different AI tools without much protection.
The Project Manager (Internal)
What? The modern twist on the unfashionable role, the classic project lead who takes important projects and drives towards set deadlines
Why? Almost every business is slowing in the delivery of important work (especially larger projects) and it is hindering how a company performs. This role will be responsible for alignment, moving from stagnated or roadblock to nearer completion. Project Managers have the autonomy from leadership to push and push harder where many Product & Delivery Managers don’t.
Having been a Project Manager and a Product lead you have very different roles and Product is often a fully political role, whereas a Project Manager can use brute secondary executive force to make changes. A great Project Manager will ensure great retrospectives are made and ensure the right performance impact is made alongside any cultural bridges they may have burnt.
The Distribution Specialist (Internal)
What? A dedicated person who specialises in positively obsessing about getting your company, your people and your products in front of right eyeballs.
Why? Many companies have Social Media, they have CRM (email marketing), PR and Performance Marketers but this isn’t gaining the cut-through that is required to gain more exposure to the most important updates from your business. This is an incredibly small pool to hire from however it is critical in the nosiest content market (feeds have been flooded with quantity of content not a quality of content and relationships with key distribution centres and people will be critical for all non-huge companies)
Most businesses struggle to hire a Marketing or Growth specialist who concentrates on Retention or modern-day Distribution, these roles are going to be critical for many companies to gain any traction and make sure their latest update or product feature or pricing change cuts through.
The Performance Coach (Internal/External)
What? The coach can be internal or external (could be seen as a similar person to the character Wendy Rhodes in Billions). The coach will help to improve “hard” and “soft skills” and bring in other coaches (and mentors where applicable)
Why? Traditional exec coaches have created the same training materials for over a decade and the next gen of leaders needs more coaching, and more skills (particularly more EQ and workIQ alongside PQ political intelligence), while these exec trainers have strong materials they haven’t adapted and often does not consider the person receiving the coaching and won’t tailor to them and their profile.
One important note, in the world of work we operate in today, there is a role for the “software coach”, a dedicated person helping all staff members to get the most out of the 40-50 different pieces of software we use daily to weekly (see a new person using Notion, or trying to work out Microsoft’s (version of Notion) Loop or a person switch from Slack to MS Teams) and you will see no-one is set up to be successful using the tool or software.
The Corporate Creator (Internal)
What? A dedicated employee who acts as the revised company representative, who creates compelling, informative and educational content about and around the company.
Why? The CEO has had to take on this mantel in recent years, many companies have pushed content to be shared and amplified across social media channels, specifically LinkedIn, re-shares, reposts and re-quotes have been down-weighted in their algorithms. The role of the spokesperson has also lost its shine with these roles being seen through and not being invited onto podcasts, news interviews and non-corporate press moments.
The corporate creator has unofficially existed for a few years, the creators have often been brand policed versus being embraced and coached into what the brand would like to see alongside their organic content creation or curation. Be wary of your company not embracing these types of creators or collaborating with your employees in this way.
There will be a demand for more content to be created, what you will need to ask as a business (and with the distribution specialist) is how can we increase the quality, increase reach and impact of your content versus creating huge quantities of content and spraying and praying.
This week’s focus action is to consider how you would hire or incorporate these roles into your business without overloading the existing team(s).
Dear leaders, when I look back over the last two decades of my career, there are a number of common themes that come up and bubble back up to the surface.
In March 2020 I wrote one of my most popular blog posts called Problem Raisers Vs Problem Solvers Vs Problematics.
In short, it is about the three different problem profiles. I have revisited the blog post and updated it to align specifically with leadership and how we can improve our teams(s) and importantly the leaders around us.
» Throughout my career, I have made many observations about teams and individuals, as I have run teams in agencies, had two of my own consultancies, advised businesses & marketplaces and worked across multiple disciplines and business sectors; I have seen many versions of individuals who raise problems or pain points or become the problems themselves.
For the most part, people raise pain points, typically it is for the right reasons and depending on your work environment (or direct manager), you will see types of three profiles of people:
Problem Raisers — Problem Solvers — Problematics
Problem Raisers
Problem Raisers usually have the right intent, they want to raise pain points for themselves, for users or for clients. Problem Raisers want to create a fix to these pain points, however, they might not engineered in that way, they may not be creative (Problem Solvers are) or environmentally it is not their place (theposition within the org or down to core individuals or departments to be the fixers) to offer a solution.
Problem Raisers are concerned about the problem but the fix is not always an important milestone for them, they potentially work around the problem or in some cases can continue to work without the Problem being explicitly fixed or removed.
A great team or cross-functional teams have a blend of Problem Raisers and Problem Solvers.
Problem Solvers
Problem Solvers (often seen as ‘the rescuer’ in Stephen Karpman’s The Drama Triangle) are those people who find pain points, raise problems and then offer solutions, typically driven by the outcome and fixing the problem that is at hand.
Problem Solvers can come in two subcategories:
Empowered Problem Solver: Empowered Problem Solvers want to solve the puzzle, they see puzzles not problems. Empowered Problem Solvers have the ability to lead from the front and often act as the project manager and engineer the fix. The fix is their energy source and how they thrive.
“Problem Solver Solutioniser”: The problem solver solutioniser are not empowered to make the change themselves and have to push for the solution from the passenger seat.
From experience, the best Problem Solvers typically have a growth mindset, they embrace change, they strive to improve themselves and the situation around them and want to take it on as a learning curve and grow from the experience.
There can actually be negative to Problem Solvers; they can get frustrated and fairly quickly and do not understand why these problems are not fixed. Problem Solvers often have high IQ and WIQ (work IQ) but can lack the PQ (political intelligence) needed to ensure these problems are addressed.
The best Marketing, Growth and Product people I have worked with fall into the Problem Solvers profile and actively want to address the pain points at hand and the ones that are up and coming and prioritise accordingly.
If a Problem Solver Solutioniser is ignored or their pain points are not addressed in a reasonable time, over time Problem Solvers can turn into Problematics and that can be a difficult place for you and your teams.
Most often Problematics have a negative impact on their colleagues, they negatively impact how they are perceived and will then impact your department’s performance and the company’s subculture.
As a leader, this is where you have to step up and ensure these changes are made or you or an external exec coach actually evolves the Problem Solver Solutioniser’s to have more PQ (political intelligence).
Problematics
We have all worked with Problematics, they stand out, they are a negative (almost toxic) employee and unfortunately, the likelihood is they have been burnt, and the pain points they raise have not been addressed in the way they have felt heard.
Problematics feel like their pain points have never been addressed or fixed and every time they raise pain points it comes across as a problem or someone else fault.
Problematics are often overly negative and it starts to spread or they compare their experiences versus others and start resenting the work or workplace. Two or more Problematics in close proximity can have a real negative impact on people and teams around them.
I generally believe Positive Problematics can be moved back to Problem Raisers with specific coaching, supporting frameworks and measurements to help them understand the logic behind the decision made and re-engage them back into the business.
My Problem-Solving Power Half Hours can work with Positive Problematics and I recommend there are two or three sessions to uncover their issues and enable them to put across their business cases.
Once a Problematic knows deep down things won’t change or they cannot make the changes they have recommended, unfortunately, they become Negative Problematics.
Negative Problematics are faced with a realistic outcome and that is often unclear to them, it is to move onto a new workplace and have the opportunity to become Problem Raisers and reset their energy and become successful again with their role.
One Problem — Two Solutions: With every problem raised, you should offer two possible solutions, one preferred and show how you landed with this solution and the second an alternative.
This framework works particularly well with more senior people who are unaware of these types of pain points or those who like to make the decisions.
It is always important to ensure you show business impact, and external impact with revenue figures and I recommend going that step further and showing internal/cultural impact.
Offer a way to show which people or teams need to be involved and the timeline of the proposed solution. If this pain point is to replace other issues or stop work on existing items on roadmaps everything needs to be laid out and thought through. Often you will need to speak to the relevant teams to gain this insight however if you are a Problem Solver this will be part of something you have thought of.
As a leader, you can run the exercise in 1-2-1’s, informal check-ins or across your leadership team meetings and categorise your fellow leads into these three profiles and decide if you need to help enable them, back them more or in extreme cases move them towards an exit if they have moved too far towards a Negative Problematic.
This week’s focus action is to categorise your department members into these categories and an interesting exercise is to apply this to your fellow management and leadership colleagues, this will give you a different perspective on how you can and should interact with your colleagues and the actions you have to take.
Dear Leaders, are you an entrepreneur? Or do you have an itch you want to scratch but struggling to know its time… Or would you consider yourself an intrepreneur*?
If yes, this week’s leaders letter with returning guest Caleb Parker is for you. Caleb is a true entrepreneur, what makes Caleb unique is his ability to understand complicated markets, building brilliant brands to stand out and evolve the industry before sweeping changes.
Caleb and I had a great chat a few weeks ago and I wanted to bring it to you in the format you enjoy most, podcast, video and written formats.
Quote Of The Podcast
As entrepreneurs, we’re, we’re telling a story where we’re creating new ideas and we need to be sharing that with the world. I fundamentally believe that entrepreneurs make the world a better place.
I’ve said this many times to the point that it’s almost like a recording now, but for lack of for the, you know, trying to avoid being, you know, not authentic, I really believe that entrepreneurs, because we’re the ones who are standing up and saying, you know, there’s gotta be a better way.
And to be able to scale a business, to be able to grow a tribe, to be able to attract people to our cause, we have to be, we have to make sure people know about it.
— Caleb Parker
Caleb and I discussed some incredibly important topics:
The new Misfits Mindset podcast and why it’s important
Dedicating life to championing the entrepreneur mindset
Why modern companies have to embrace media
The future of work and remembering the importance of people first approach
The future of humanity
AI and the shift we are experiencing and going to experience
If you prefer podcasts click play and listen below or on your favourite player like Spotify or Apple podcasts.
The Leadership Lessons & Takeaways From This Interview
Entrepreneurs drive the business world forward, not always perfectly, however, without entrepreneurs we would stagnate and have a lot less disruption
As a business leader, you will have several itches, especially if you already have a business or operating in one, often another itch is bigger (and better) and going to be the bigger business you will end up working on and making positive changes with – Caleb see’s opportunity and runs full pace at it when the time is aligning
When it comes to LLM and AI – ‘missions’ are going to be more important. Missions are going to be incredibly powerful as a driver and it’s critical for people to connect to a (company or personal) mission to get their best work
What works for some does not work for others and that is ok but as leaders, you have to embrace differences and enable people to thrive – whether that’s in an office environment, working hybrid or becoming more flexible within business operations
The world of work has to change, especially around the future of the office – it has to be more flexible and environments people want to work in and collaborate in not just be in to work in
The business world will change in the future and there may not be 100-year companies anymore, there could be more disposable companies set up for specific tasks and then change or fold once their tasks or job is done and that’s going to be empowering and offer futures for many professionals.
And stay up to date with Caleb’s new company Brave Corp
This week’s focus item is to embrace your entrepreneurial side and look at how you can look at a set of problems from the outside in and push forward on it, what is the worst that could happen?
Thanks and have a great week,
Danny Denhard
*intrepreneur – Is self-motivated, proactive, and action-oriented people who have leadership skills and think outside the box (link)
The Full Vodcast Transcript
Caleb Parker Bold To Brave
[00:00:00] Danny Denhard: Caleb, firstly, thanks for joining me today. I want to give like a background on, on who you are and what you do and, and the mission you’re on, but I thought I’d give a little intro because what people tend to do is they tend to ask the guest first. And I think I want to give a a little shout out because we’ve, we’ve known each other for a little while and you’re one of those people that, always comes front of mind to things. So the way I I would explain you to people when, when I do intro emails for you is first and foremost, you’re, you’re a great person. You’re an entrepreneur. You’re a builder and an operator, which many people can’t do. You’re one of the select small percentage of people who understands what it takes to be a modern day company.
[00:00:41] So you integrate media and media creation into what you do. And you’ve always put community first. So have I done a good job
[00:00:49] better than me? Probably thank you for that. I really appreciate it, Danny. Yeah, no, I, I think media is important. As entrepreneurs, we’re, we’re telling a story where we’re creating new ideas and we need to be sharing that with the world.
[00:01:02] I fundamentally believe that entrepreneurs make the world a better place. I’ve said this many times to the point that it’s almost like a recording now, but for lack of for the, you know, trying to avoid being, you know, not authentic, I really believe that entrepreneurs, because we’re the ones who are standing up and saying, you know, there’s gotta be a better way.
[00:01:20] And to be able to scale a business, to be able to grow a tribe, to be able to attract people to our cause, we have to be, we have to make sure people know about it. And so that’s where I think social media has been fantastic for helping us over the last 20 years to do that. I’m a big fan of using media for that.
[00:01:39] And you said mission, I guess my personal mission somewhere around 10, 12 years ago, I decided that I’m dedicating my life to champion in that entrepreneur mindset in that I’ve been going doubling down on that for the last several years.
[00:01:57] And you’ve, you’ve had quite a successful decade or so you’ve been involved in many different businesses, all different shapes and sizes.
[00:02:07] You’ve, you’ve obviously got you’ve got a lot going on. I think somewhere to start might be with the new podcast series you’ve got, which is called Misfits, right?
[00:02:16] Yeah. Misfits mindset. It’s it’s a, it’s about what we’re doing is sitting down with founders of scale up companies to really dive deep into how they think and how they approach decision making, how they attract people to their team, getting the right people on board, how they rally people around their purpose.
[00:02:35] And then when it comes to pivoting or making really tough decisions, what goes on in their brain, I think there’s a lot of podcasts, there’s a lot of content out there on how to do this, what to do tactics and creating strategies. But it’s the, it’s the mindset. I think it. It takes to, to really be successful.
[00:02:58] Because business is hard. And yeah, I just think that I really want to dive into that for my own learnings, but also for, you know, other entrepreneurs as I champion this, this mindset,
[00:03:10] I think is something that you, you said when you go to like conferences. People talk about what they did. They don’t necessarily talk about why they did it and how they did it.
[00:03:19] And then on podcasts, it’s like the greatest resource for, for almost anyone, because you can find out what they did, why they did it. And some of the, the how, but what you hit the nail on the head is the mindset. No one really gets into that and drills into it specifically in and around business. And I think that’s like something that’s going to be unique and why people will want to tune in as of next week for episode one and the series, was there anything specific that you learned?
[00:03:45] Are there like two or three different really high level or really specific lessons that you took away or that you, you have to apply for your new business?
[00:03:58] Well, I don’t want to spoil the season, of course, but I will say that there, there are some, some recurring patterns that, that we, we noticed across the, the 10 episodes in season one, season two is in production right now. But we’ve got a range of people different industries and different phases in their business.
[00:04:20] They’ve all raised millions. They’ve all, some of them have exited. But I think resilience is one keyword that I would use, but I don’t want to go into too many details because it’s just, it’s a, it’s a great season and yeah, you’re right. Trailer and episode one drops on Monday the 30th and then for 10 weeks, we’ll have.
[00:04:39] Each, each episode coming out and you in something that might is there anything that really surprised you like that really jumped out and you, you really were surprised by what, what someone said or like an under undertone that happened that you weren’t aware of, or you didn’t think would come out of, of the questions and answers.
[00:04:58] Yeah, there’s, well, there’s one thing that pops to mind is in episode one with Holly hole. She’s the founder of an events company. She’s actually nominated for the great British entrepreneur awards. And I’ve always been for myself. I’ve always tried to separate emotion from business decisions.
[00:05:20] And she made the point that actually it’s not about separating emotions, about controlling emotions, because you need emotions in business, because that’s what helps you bring out and rally people in, you know, the positive aspects of the emotions. Can, can contribute to business success and that just made me see things a little bit differently.
[00:05:40] , Everyone understands IQ, you know, your, your intelligence, especially around like in the job that you’ve got a few skillsets that that I would apply to IQ. You’ve got EQ, which is emotional intelligence, which got a lot of attention a while ago, but a lot of people don’t actually work on it.
[00:05:56] And I think, like you said, like the emotions and being able to either control them or lean into them. It’s really important. And then I call it a PQ, which is political intelligence. Like I think what a lot of people haven’t realized is the two actually played together. There’s the emotional intelligence and then the political side, which is typically playing the game or, or leaning into working through some of the problems.
[00:06:20] And I think a lot of the time, the emotion sides, the emotional side is, is tapered down or, or, or held down, whereas actually a lot of the time you can win by embracing and blending the two, two sides together. So I’d love to, I’m going to be tuning in next week.
[00:06:38] There, there is a, you bring this up. There’s another episode the founder of a company called Tokyo, which is TOQ.
[00:06:44] io.
[00:06:45] , so Eduardo talks about how how we can see truths on both sides of, of a conversation or a topic. And I think that plays very well into business and in sitting down and negotiating business deals, but it can go into, you know, relationships in everyday life to politics to. Everything
[00:07:05] I can’t on a lot of people’s leadership journeys and entrepreneur journeys, they are so busy.
[00:07:15] They don’t ever take a step back and consider what’s happened or don’t actually try and. Feel their emotions and the emotive sides. I’ll be tuning in to to definitely dive into it and understand it. We you’ve also got like a new, a new company coming out that’s part of part of the podcast series to, to a degree, if you want to dive into it a little bit and give people a flavor of what you’re going to be doing and how it’s going to be driving business forward.
[00:07:44] Yeah, the, you know, the podcast itself the, you know, our audience are, are the people that we want to be surrounded by the people we want to do business with in general entrepreneurs, people with the people with the growth mindset we’re launching brave. And there’s some news that came out last week.
[00:08:00] I the founder of a brand co working brand called bold. We set up in 2016 was acquired in 2019. And back in may, I started working on brave, actually, I’ve been working on the idea for brave for quite some time, but officially back in may, I started working on brave and then we just announced the launch of the new company last week.
[00:08:20] in January, we’re launching the brave app and we’re, we’ve taking all of the growth mindset entrepreneurs from startup to scale up around the world and giving them an opportunity to connect with each other come to the, our events that we partner with other entrepreneurs to facilitate and to bring people together.
[00:08:40] We have a network of locations that people can tap into. But I don’t want to make this a sales pitch about braid because really, it’s really about the mission of championing that entrepreneur mindset. That’s just the way we facilitate that.
[00:08:54] And that’s something that as long as I’ve known you it’s something you’ve been passionate about and you know, you’ve been doing it for such a long time.
[00:09:02] I think people often don’t realize like how long it takes and how much work it is to not only start a company, but have that like mission in the background where like you’re striving to always, always succeed and always have that like connective tissue or element where people have to come together to succeed.
[00:09:20] I think that’s something that’s probably been lost a little bit more recently.
[00:09:24] Well, it’s the cliche thing where you say, okay, well, it’s 10 years of hard work, looks like an overnight success or whatever. And I think what, what I’ve learned in my journey is the vehicle may change, but the mission doesn’t.
[00:09:39] And, you know, I’ve been, I’ve, I’ve been in several different vehicles, but my mission has stayed the same in the past decade. And this is a new vehicle, it’s an evolution of an existing vehicle, but I think the mission of helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses, making real estate easier for entrepreneurs.
[00:09:55] And I think it’s my small contribution to making the world a better place.
[00:10:01] Sounds like great mission to me. I think there’s a lot of there’s a lot of, obviously there’s a lot of noise around to return to the office and office space and, and that, and Dropbox recently announced that they’re going to be giving back a lot of space.
[00:10:14] Do you think that office is going to be like this big, big contentious point for, for the future? Or do you think there’s going to be a shift and people will, you know, 2024, 2025 will come to a point and it will, there’ll be like a leveling of the market almost for return to the office and the office being like one of the most important elements to.
[00:10:36] It’s a success in, for, for corporations or businesses.
[00:10:41] I look forward to the day where, where we don’t have to talk about return to office.
[00:10:45] I look forward to the day when we have podcasts and not talk about return to office. I’d rather be talking about return to humanity. Because if you ask a hundred different people how they like to work and what makes them successful, you’re going to get a hundred different answers.
[00:10:58] So I think the last century that we’ve been working in offices in the knowledge based economy, it’s all been, real estate’s all been about taking a white box and giving it to a company, the company turning it into a branded box. And then that branded box. The company tells everybody to fit into, and I think going forward, it’s going to be a lot different in the sense that people understand how they’re.
[00:11:23] Team works best and everybody works best slightly differently. And so companies will to attract the right talent and they’re going to be more empathetic to people and they’re going to be able to help people be successful in their own way. And that’s going to mean a lot of different things for a lot of different companies, but the office quotations no longer has a monopoly.
[00:11:44] On work, it just becomes one of the tools in the whole platform of work. And so, to me, and this is some of the stuff that we want to address with brave is we want to be able to create offices that what we’re calling campuses are flagship locations and cities where there are places that destinations that people come to do certain types of work some days.
[00:12:07] And the app gives them access to tap into other communities and workplace environments on other days. But there’s going to be days where they don’t go into an office and they work from home. I’m working from home today. So I think the future is flexible and that’s what I’ve believed for some time.
[00:12:22] I’m just kind of surprised it took a global pandemic for other people to get on board with it.
[00:12:27] I think for a lot of people and probably for the next generation to come, because there isn’t like a playbook, there isn’t a copy paste that you, that people can follow, it’s really difficult because.
[00:12:40] The people in charge are always going to default to or mimic the way that worked for them. And I think this is, this is like the one of the core tenants of, of, you know, my mission of trying to fix the broken world of work is to help people understand that everyone is different. Everyone is engineered slightly differently and everyone can work in different environments, but the traditional office spaces and isn’t always conducive to work and definitely isn’t conducive to, to collaboration. So it’s just something that you nailed it on the head is humanity. And, but what we’ve. Lost a little bit in this as well is, is understanding that some people can work in a busy, noisy coffee shop and others can’t.
[00:13:24] Some people will do their best work on their mobile phone between commuting on the way home and other people have to sit in absolute silence or sit in their bedroom on their bed to do their best work. It’s just, that’s sort of been lost in, in the last, you know, decade.
[00:13:44] And even, even within one person, it’s not binary because sometimes I do a lot of travel, sometimes on a plane, I can be super productive on my laptop and getting things done.
[00:13:55] Other times on the plane, I don’t even want to open my laptop. I just want to watch some movies and drink some wine and have my meal and go to sleep or, you know, so I think it depends on the day. And so it’s not just. Depending on the company or depending on the person, it actually depends on the day in the mood that person’s in.
[00:14:10] So I think the future is a lot more human and empathetic. And I think the leaders that are going to succeed going forward, the companies that succeed with these leaders are going to be more in tune with their team and empowering their team to make those decisions for themselves. I think the other thing is you talked about how people learn to be successful growing up in the workforce themselves, and they’re trying to pass that on.
[00:14:35] I think the best leaders are leaning, leaning into the future by looking at what the next generation is doing. And so I was at a Google comp, I was at, sorry, I was at a conference two weeks ago at Google HQ in London, and they were talking about AI and they were talking about how AI is going to impact us.
[00:14:52] And look, there’s a lot of questions around that and we won’t go into that. But one of the questions that I thought about was, okay, well, if, if we no longer have to search for the answer, but we can speak the question and not just the answer comes back, but what to do with that answer and, and not just have one answer.
[00:15:14] A path, but multiple paths that we can choose from the A. I. Really takes all that up. What if we’re just thinking about the right path to choose? The answers are all there. Here’s the right path to choose. We have to decide that. So that’s going to just change the whole workforce. And, you know, we can go down a rabbit hole there, but.
[00:15:33] I think there’s more questions than answers around that right now, but I think it’s important for us to lean into the future of work by looking at how people are growing up today.
[00:15:43] For sure. We can, we can flirt a little bit with AI. It’s overhyped at the moment. I think the, a lot of the tools are very similar.
[00:15:52] My true belief is that… At the end of it, we’re probably going to get to a point where we have assistants, like an AI assistant, that’s going to help us informed. The one thing that a lot of people aren’t talking around is like our competitive edge, which is that we’ve got the gut, which will often give us the best answer.
[00:16:12] So a lot of us are really data driven and that’d be really easy.
[00:16:15] You got the what that gives us the best answer?
[00:16:17] The gut?
[00:16:17] The gut, yeah. So like our gut reaction, our gut feel drives us forward. So almost all big businesses. Say 20 years ago, didn’t have any of this data or any startup 15 years ago, had a tiny, tiny percentage of, of informational data.
[00:16:34] And what a lot of companies and people have moved away from is the gut, the gut feel or what’s, what’s driven them or made them successful. So some over lean and over index on it, but there’s a lot of companies now who are going to allow large language models to give them the answer. And without being cautious enough to query it or say to ourselves, but what do we, what do we believe and what’s our gut telling us, or what is it that we might’ve missed? That’s going to give us that competitive edge because otherwise all the data is going to be, data is going to drive all the decisions. It’s going to be moving away from what’s made a lot of people successful. I’m not, you know, everyone will quote Steve jobs in five years time and say, well, Steve jobs wouldn’t have, wouldn’t have given all of the data away and wouldn’t have enabled the machine to make all the decisions, especially on design or on features.
[00:17:28] We’re going to get to this point where we’re going to be assisted and I completely agree. It would give us the pathways or the steps that we could take. It’s just on us now as like the decision makers or the business leaders to decide whether that data is right, or those pathways are right, or we need to interject and become a different source of decision making because unless you’re going to give your complete knowledge center, like I’ve got almost 8, 000 Apple notes, unless I’m going to give that in into a large language model, it’s not going to necessarily understand me and help the team around me. And I think that’s what some of the async work is, is sort of done well, is everything’s around clear communication.
[00:18:15] And I wonder in the future, if we’re going to be able to get to a point. Where we can say, AI has given us this answer, how do we give the second, third, fourth order on it? And how do we empower people around us to, to say, actually, we don’t believe that is true. We need to tweak that. I think that’s something that a lot of people have almost stepped away from a little bit and gone on that hype cycle to a point, but I’m happy to be proven wrong in, in the future.
[00:18:46] I think, I think there is a lot of hype around it and I’ll be the first to raise my hand to say, I’m not an expert. I’m very curious about it. My friend, Jason says that nothing’s AI right now. It’s just machine learning. There’s no artificial intelligence. It’s just, it’s just, it’s learning right now. But I think I can imagine that in the future we’ll be able to ask it a question.
[00:19:07] It presents us with several options. We choose, let’s go back to the humanity side. We choose as a, as a human, what we think is the right path forward. And then it goes and completes the task. So I think what that does though, if that. Is a reality that we will one day live in from a leadership perspective, we have to stop valuing doing in time and put more value on outputs results in thinking, and that’s a big shift.
[00:19:39] That’s a big shift for leadership who’s used to managing people doing things on a systematic basis.
[00:19:48] The question I was come back to now is. For the, for the middle managers and the people who are department leads or business leads is, are you going to enable and allow more policing? So like, are you going to allow human policing?
[00:20:03] So where they are, what they do, the delivery on the task, or is that going to be some sort of automation? That’s going to, that’s going to be the driver and the police, the police force on, on, on their work and the outputs of the company, because I think that’s where we’re going to land in. In a short while, and are we going to be able to.
[00:20:24] To trust, trust that enough, or is it going to be still relying on a combo of people and process that’s automated?
[00:20:32] Look, I don’t have the answers here for sure, but my ethos is that we bring people together around a mission. We work backwards from that mission to how, how did we get there? We all get on the same page with that strategy, the tactics we’re going to deploy.
[00:20:52] And then we give each other the space and autonomy to choose how to do that and come together when we need to. Now that’s a bit maybe altruistic or maybe even utopia. And it doesn’t work right now for all companies because there’s a transition going in, in leadership styles. But the future to me is people aren’t policing.
[00:21:14] People are motivating.
[00:21:17] That’s what the, you know, difference between a manager and a leader is motivation and driving people to, to get by into what they’re going to be doing long term. Manager often is someone who moves. Moves people from task to task or tactical channel to channel or spreadsheet to spreadsheet.
[00:21:36] Right. So yeah, I, I sympathize and appreciate you giving, giving your thought on that one. With a lot of the stuff that you’re doing, you’re, you’re kind of predicting a little bit of the future of work and some of the ways of working. Do you have do you have some predictions or do you have a, like some.
[00:21:54] Some feeling around what the future of work might look like. Obviously you’re shaping it a little bit with Brave and you’re sharing a load of insights through the podcast. Is there, are there. Do you have some thoughts around the future of work and when we might be moving towards?
[00:22:09] Well, at a macro level, I think we’re going to see a lot more companies get started, a lot more people moving into entrepreneurship, a lot, almost call it solo inc or, you know freelancer inc.
[00:22:22] There’s going to be a lot of people where that become their own entrepreneur. Maybe they don’t build up a big company with lots of people around them, but they plug into other people’s companies and a lot of people working together in that way. I think there’s still going to be some big companies that grow.
[00:22:38] I think we’re going to see a lot more volatility around that. Seeing, we see companies today that have been around for over a hundred years. I think we’ll see less of those in the future. Companies will get set up to, for a specific cause they’ll go for several years and then they’ll go away and they’ll evolve into something else.
[00:22:53] Maybe. So macro level, I think we’re going to see a lot more uncertainty on jobs and stuff like that, but people on the flip side have the opportunity to create their own income, create their own wealth to control their own destiny. I think that’s going to be very difficult for some people. But this is why I, you know, I think you go back to the whole cliche of nurture versus nature.
[00:23:19] I think some people are born with sort of a innate ability to take on risk. And I think other people, even if they’re not born with it, can learn it. And so I think we need to be in our school systems, teaching people not to just go get a college degree or you go to university and then get a job that you stay at for a long time.
[00:23:39] It’s, it, we need to be able to navigate this new world and people need to be taught this.
[00:23:45] But I think what all that means though, is that and I’ll come back to my world of the future of work as it relates to the future of office, because that’s where sort of I, I live. I think real estate in general has always been inflexible for entrepreneurs and is very expensive to get into in the past.
[00:24:08] We used to think the first thing when we’re going to start up a company, we’ve got to go get an office. And now we don’t have to do that. But at some point we need to access. Professional places that we can meet people, whether it’s our team or our, you know, team or our colleagues and and customers.
[00:24:26] And so I think the future of real estate becomes more flexible because it, as I said earlier, doesn’t have the monopoly on work anymore. It’s got to be more service driven. It’s got to be more hospitality driven. It’s got to facilitate a community because I think people want to go where they belong and that they are empowered to choose when and where they work best. It’s about going to places that I feel taken care of and I feel like I fit in.
[00:24:55] 100 percent agree that the one there’s that one thread there that I personally really like is. Years and years we’ve both worked in environments where the office is. Open plan, you have, you have your desk, you have your monitor or two monitors, you have your laptop or your computer, and that’s your space.
[00:25:16] And you work around people from your team or your department. And then everything turned into hot desking and people didn’t really change up. And they loved their desk, their cup on their desk. They knew that they were near the toilet or the kitchen. And then interestingly, now it’s not, you know, the office is still very much similar layout.
[00:25:37] People didn’t rethink or, or restructure it and didn’t embrace the opportunity to change it. And something that I worked with a startup a few years ago, and we, we really rethought the office. Like we thought about what, how people would want to collaborate, how rather than the customer support team didn’t want to be near the sales team.
[00:25:58] It’s how could you embrace a different layout or. Or different areas where people could be noisy and collaborate. And then more library based rules where people could go and be quiet. And, and the kitchen was more of like a, an informal breakout area where you could have meetings or brainstorm stuff like that.
[00:26:15] And I think that’s, what’s really important for the future is offices will look different, like they’re going to have to operate differently, connecting people and exactly what you said is. It can’t just be a gray box anymore. It has to be something that is interchangeable or some way you can feel like you’re, you’ve got your community there, which is just so important.
[00:26:40] And I think where leaders need to evolve most is understanding that it’s different now, like it has to change in the near future and the longterm. And I predict that people that are for. I haven’t rethought the office, so I’m going to lose. And those who really rethink it or rethink environments are going to be the ones that win.
[00:26:59] And I really liked the idea of companies don’t, don’t have to be there for a hundred years anymore. I think the people will spin up companies, solve specific problems and then move on to the next one. And they don’t have to be acquired or have to sell to, to see that as successful. I think they’re going to be so many different career paths people take and rather than having one career or two careers, you might have three or four.
[00:27:25] And then you can patch on top passions that you might have. So. I love your prediction or where you, you’re going to help reshape. Some people’s future of work.
[00:27:36] Well, this is why I’m curious about the misfits mindset the scale of entrepreneurs, because if you think about being empathetic with people, but also rallying people around a mission and a purpose entrepreneurs, startups.
[00:27:51] Or where that ethos sits in, you can see it clearly the best, the people that are the early founders, the early senior team, the early employees, you know, all the way down to employee number 20, 50 at some point along the line, the further you get away from the founder in that early stage, the further you get away from the purpose and the mission, if you look at the companies today, I think the companies of the future, the leaders of those companies, and it doesn’t have to be just the founder and the CEO, but the leaders throughout the company are able to be so close to the mission and the purpose and are able to articulate that and have that front and center in all of their conversations with recruitment, attracting people with customers, with investors, everybody’s aligned around this mission and purpose.
[00:28:37] Because I have a theory that when someone is aligned, when someone is, is working towards something they really care about, they don’t think of it as work. So if. In the future of work, if people are aligning their, their purpose with their income, then they’re going to be happier. They’re not going to go home at the day and hate to go back to work the next day.
[00:29:03] They’re going to look forward to it. Mondays are going to be better for people. And so I think it’s important that leaders really articulate that. And don’t just treat people like an employee and like you’re solving my problem of getting to the next level. It’s it’s we’re all on the same team here trying to advance this particular cause.
[00:29:28] If you think about volunteerism over the last several years, volunteerism has rose significantly. People want to pursue something. People want to spend their time doing something that they care about and that they’re not getting paid for it. So imagine being able to do that and get paid for it.
[00:29:48] That’s a, that’s a big idea that I pitched a number of years ago for, for somewhere I used to work.
[00:29:56] I saw that actually.
[00:29:57] And it was one of those ideas that like is more than money. But I don’t want to get into, into like too, like too, too much detail into it. But if you can “imagine more”, so for what a lot of people don’t realize is companies often just are based on transactions, transactions, and, you know, user data.
[00:30:17] What we’ve moved away from is understanding actually is things that are very often more valuable than that. So whether that’s the time that you can spend and donate or it’s the energy that you can give to someone or it’s the support you can give to other people, doesn’t always have to be monetary and very often the monetary doesn’t.
[00:30:36] It doesn’t match the love or the energy or the time someone else can spend. So interestingly, it all, it all comes around, but I completely agree when you can base your future on something that you’re really passionate about and that you, you want to pursue some companies will embrace that. And I think that’s something that we’re going to see more and more.
[00:30:57] And I. I personally would love to see people, even if they’re intrapreneurs, if they can get the support internally to, to push that forward, I think we’re going to be in a much better place commercially and, You mentioned the word
[00:31:14] transaction and, and I think companies and employees, that’s a transactional experience a lot of times. And we announced the Brave launch last week. And my LinkedIn DMs like got flooded and you can quickly see who really cared about the cause and who didn’t buy what they said. And like, I’ve had some people to say, look, if you need any help, I love your mission, I love what you’re doing.
[00:31:39] I’ll, I’ll, I’ll work for free to help you, you know, and then, you know, it’s like, okay, well, at which point we’re going to be hiring people, that person, she’s who I want to hire, or he’s who I want to hire because. Forget skillset and experience and all that it’s the, it’s the passion they have for the cause that makes the most difference.
[00:31:57] Cause you can teach all that other stuff.
[00:32:01] A hundred percent funny enough with what you’re doing and, and where you’re going with, we’re seeing a lot of groups, you know, like iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, they’re becoming more and more powerful. In and out of companies, because you can learn far more and ask questions of people who know the company or know of the leaders and they’re going to get unfiltered responses, whereas online you tend not to get that, but it’d be really interesting in the future, especially in with Brave is you might get recommended someone who is an incredible employee who you wouldn’t want to lose, but it lines them up really nicely.
[00:32:38] And you can, you know, not let your. Your platform necessarily would love to do it, but that recommendation, that connection is going to be so valuable. And what people will pay high, high amounts for where they used to have to pay a recruiter high retainer fees to, to send someone who isn’t anywhere near as passionate or qualified.
[00:32:57] So I look forward to the launch.
[00:33:02] Me too. Thank you.
[00:33:04] Why don’t you promote the podcast, the new launch, obviously that’s coming out fully in January, but where should people connect with you? What, what should, how should they either help you or what, what can, how can people help you move, moving forward?
[00:33:20] Well, thank you. First of all I would say that misfits mindset drops next Monday, finding all the major podcast platforms. I’m on LinkedIn. So Caleb Parker on my social media, Instagram, formerly Twitter X at Caleb underscore Parker. So I’ll obviously share. And all those places, but listen to the podcast.
[00:33:41] I would, that’s where I would promote the most. You’ll find on the podcast how to connect with brave and our timings and when our first events are where people can plug into to connect with other like minded people. And then. Look, I think the best way people can help me is to, to go out and, and find the problem that they’re passionate about and go solve it because that, that’s how we create a better world.
[00:34:04] And that’s what I’m trying to, to champion. Let’s, let’s solve the problems of today. And and create a better future together. I know it sounds cliche and cheesy and all that, but I’m American. So I can, I can get away with it, I think. And you can tell it far better than us miserable Brits. So yeah, it’s it’s great.
[00:34:20] Thank you. Thank you for all your time your, your honesty and, and I look forward to the podcast and supporting you on Brave.
[00:34:28] Thank you, Danny. Really appreciate it.
Dear leaders, have you ever met someone whose story and energy are so infectious you know you have to work with them?
I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with a motivational speaker and author of a new kids’ book Credo.
As I teased in the community as the sixth business moat (leaders letter 177), Luke and I wanted to share the mic and talk through the mission he is on and the energy he gives with every motivational talk, in his professional workshops and even when coaching his kid’s football (soccer) team.
I guarantee Luke’s incredible journey will inspire you and now on his mission to make every child’s internal butterfly bright – it will give you energy for more.
Luke and I discussed some incredibly important topics:
Leadership: How everyone has an opportunity to lead (but in different ways)
Lifelong Influences: How Luke’s former head teacher Mr Spencer inspired him and so many students to succeed (hint – he is that one teacher who had a huge impact on your life)
Pro Football To Dad: Life lessons and then applying them from not quite making the elite-level professional footballer to being a dad and taking on your inspired dream(s)
Passion => Job: How Luke turned his passion(s) into a life calling and a job as a motivational speaker and now author
Education Reform: Why Luke is going to create a new schooling experience to refresh how education operates within the UK, which has been stuck in the same cycle for decades
The Leadership Lessons I Took Away From This Interview:
1. Leaders (Like Mr Spencer) will have positive and negative impacts on your life, if you are deliberate as a leader you will be remembered. Legacy will live on for many years, how are you talked about behind your back or in the future
2. When you are told to not go for it (like Luke and Luke’s mum), you have two choices, (1) go for it anyway or (2) let it inspire and drive you (and the people around you, whether that’s colleagues, your children or family members)
3. Your passion will show up in and throughout your career, leadership is a skill you need to learn and when you blend your passion and leadership together it will translate and inspire many around you. This is why so many thought leaders and personality-led businesses (you hear more from the company leader than the company themselves) are doing so well currently
4. Even if you don’t make it in one hard profession (Luke’s professional football experience) you still have the chance to craft your own products and journey and even become an author
5. Have your own (leadership) theme, Luke’s is your inner butterfly – this is something Luke and I discussed in detail after the recording and I completely agree with it. If you do not have a leadership theme I am going to be diving deeper into your leadership theme in more detail in a few weeks.
6. Have a vision for the future – Luke is on his mission to change educational institutes for the better, it made me question what my vision was for the future. I know some of my steps for the future but are they realistic and then big enough to roll up to my mission of fixing the broken world of work
Dear leaders, are you prepared for a sixth business moat?
Here is the list of the traditional economic moats – including network effects that we all rushed towards over the last decade
Community.
The chances are you haven’t heard a definition of community that has even got you thinking about how you can turn your business into a community-driven ecosystem.
Let’s change that. Here’s a quick teaser on why community has to be included:
I recently spoke at the Love Inbound Conference. It was a great conference and organised really well and had a number of brilliant speakers, one of whom Luke Staton you will hear from in a couple of weeks (below is a short video to give you a teaser).
Here’s me presenting the risks and benefits of community and why it’s not going to be everyone!
My concept and talk were centred around you guessed it… community, it is doing business differently (you can decide whether it is worth the long-term work and if you can make it effective in your space) and why connecting at a deeper level (community done right) is more important and actually scaleable.
Community is how the smartest brands are going to be building “connected customers” not just a broadcast channel on WhatsApp or Instagram (move over Facebook Groups, Circle and Telegram groups) but a fully engaging community platform for existing customers (aka members) and new customers can feel safe, share their insights, tips and give feedback directly to the brand, while saving other community members money (think about sharing discount codes/coupons and being rewarded for it) and having a direct 1-2-1 relationship with their brand of choice.
Sound too good to be true?
NO!
Not with hard work following the rules and cheat codes provided you will win.
I have broken down the full presentation into an exec summary below or view the full community deck below
The Exec Summary Of ‘Community As A Moat?’:
Network Effects Table Stakes Now: Moving on and building on top of network effects,
Trust: Customers and potential customers don’t trust brands – more trust = more business and more recommendations to friends, family and colleagues
Improved Acquisition: the only way to kill one-and-done customers is to build deeper connections with your customers and provide better service (quicker payback period, lower CAC, better LTV)
Less Reliance On Platforms: Remove your business reliance on algorithmic updates and zero-click results
Closed To Competitors: We can see every competitor’s Marketing moves, from their emails, to their push notifications to seeing every one of their ads
Better Retention: Retention comes from trust and offering great products we need (and sometimes want) – retention will be higher, it will engage customers who are advocates and those who want long-term trusted relationships
Brands have created ask fatigue: Always asking for more (this can be removed)
Whether you’re a startup, challenger brand or have aspirations to become a super brand, community will be hard work but will build a moat around your products, your people (yes builds connection deeper than CS tickets and complaints) and its performance
Everyone craves PLG (aka product-led growth) and referrals (and move away from SLG) but these are extremely hard. Why not grow with community-led growth think of a bigger & better flywheel, more feedback, and shared results
Superfans & Superspending: Be inspired by Taylor Swift’s lead, from her deep connections to building a community flywheel
Reddit is a precautionary tale of community but that’s a whole different community culture & that Reddit brought it on themselves
Dear leaders, this week I interviewed Jacob Morgan, it so happens his book goes on sale today and it is a brilliant read. I was lucky to receive an early copy and it’s a must-read for modern-day leaders.
A little about Jacob: Jacob is a professionally trained futurist, speaker, and the best-selling author of 5 books including his most recent, Leading with Vulnerability: Unlock Your Greatest Superpower to Transform Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization and is the host of Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan. Jacob’s work has been endorsed by the CEOs of: Unilever, Cisco, Mastercard, Nestle, Best Buy, SAP, KPMG, T-Mobile, Audi and Kaiser just to name a few so you are about to learn a number of leadership lessons below:
5 Questions
What are the five main takeaways from your latest book leading with vulnerability? And how can a leader apply these takeaways over the next month?
Vulnerability for leaders is not the same as it for everyone else. As a leader your words have more weight and influence so what you say and what you do reverberates much further and louder. This means that if you keep showing up to work talking about failures, challenges, and things you are struggling with, eventually people will start to wonder why you are in a leadership role and you will undermine your credibility. Be mindful of what you share and who you share with. This builds into the second point below.
Don’t be vulnerable at work, especially if you are in a leadership position. Instead, lead with vulnerability which means combining competence with connection. For example, instead of just admitting to a mistake at work, talk about what you learned and what you are going to do in the future to make sure the mistake doesn’t happen again. I call this The Vulnerable Leader Equation.
Practice this by making sure you are always bringing together competence and connection into your interactions, business decisions, and engagements.
The people you work with don’t just want to know what you are thinking but also how you are feeling about a situation or a decision. Leaders are great at sharing their rationale but are poor at sharing how something makes them feel. Being able to share this is what creates connection and trust. Take a look at something called “the feelings wheel” and instead of just saying you feel “good” or “fine,” try to get better at naming the real emotion you are feeling or experiencing.
Turn negative experiences into learning moments. Vulnerability means that you are sharing or doing something to emotionally expose yourself. Sometimes this will yield great outcomes and other times it won’t. For example, someone might use something you say against you to keep you from growing in your career. Instead of using these as reasons for why you should never be vulnerable again, focus on what you learned from the situation, about yourself, and about the other person that will allow you to do a better job of leading with vulnerability in the future.
Climb the vulnerability mountain. The cover of my book is a person getting ready to climb a mountain. The beginning of the climb is always easy but the higher up you go the more challenging it becomes, the more you might get hurt and take the wrong path. However, the more beautiful the vistas become, the farther out you can see, the more clarity you get, and the more people you meet on your journey. Identify what basecamp looks like for you, in other words what’s something you can do today that gets you going up that mountain. Maybe it’s admitting to a mistake and sharing some lessons learned. Then, define what sits at the very top of the peak for you, something scary you can’t imagine doing. Once you have the base and the peak, start climbing day by day, week by week, and month by month!
Q. What interview question would you ask a leadership candidate to see if they lead with vulnerability? If I could only ask one question it would be:
You have to confront your leader about a mistake you made on a client project. What do you say?
Q. I call the first step to vulnerable leadership “taking the corporate armour off”, what is the first recommendation for the biggest sceptics to show their new leadership skills?
It’s true, leaders need to remove the armor but this doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t have thick skin. As I write in my book:
“There’s an assumption that armoring up means not showing emotion but that’s not entirely true. Armoring up also means avoiding situations and circumstances that would require you to show any emotion or be human to begin with. Some leaders do this by shutting down difficult conversations, avoiding certain topics, or using their power and authority to get others to bend to their will without questioning authority. Bad leaders never take the hits because they don’t even put on the uniform to join their team on the field. Great leaders take the hits for their people and keep charging everyone towards the end zone. That’s what having thick skin is all about.”
One of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to leading with vulnerability is assuming that once they say or do something, that there is nothing else that can be done. It’s like taking a short in basketball, if the ball doesn’t go in, it’s not game over, you can get the rebound and shoot the ball again. The same thing is true in leadership. I recently had a heated discussion with a friend of mine about making time for us to hang out which had previously been a challenge. We talked on the phone and after I shared how disappointed I felt and how hard I was trying I noticed he became quiet. I could tell that what I said didn’t land well and was making him very angry. Instead of letting things die, I followed up and said, “you sound really upset by what I just said, tell me how you interpreted everything.” To which he replied he felt that I was acting dismissive and not appreciating the challenges he was going through. Long-story short, we figured everything out because I was able to follow up after getting a bad response.
Q. Unlocking your superpower is my favourite theme in the book. How do you recommend leaders unlock their own superpower and how would you recommend they help their teams to unlock theirs?
For leaders, you have to start. This is one of the points I had above in regards to climbing the vulnerability mountain. Reading, studying, and examining things will only get you so far, eventually you have to start taking those steps. Build your vulnerability mountain and remember to bring both connection (vulnerability) and competence (leadership) to every interaction and engagement you have. If you want to encourage your team to lead with vulnerability then it has to start with you as the leader.
Q. Your podcast has a number of brilliant guests and is a must-listen for me personally. What has surprised you by interviewing so many leaders?
Thanks! What surprised me the most is that leaders are just like everyone else. I’ve had CEOs and billionaires from some of the world’s most successful companies on my program and they have struggle with the same things that you and I struggle with. They all have families, insecurities, hopes, dreams, aspirations, and they want to be seen and heard, just like we all do. At the end of the day, we are all just a bunch of imperfect people.
Here is one of my favourite episodes of Jacob’s podcast with Seth Godin ↓
It Is Time To Remove The Passengers From Your Business
Dear leaders, if I said no passengers within your team what would I be referring to?
A passenger (to me) is someone who always sits back, does just about enough and doesn’t strive to push their work forward or importantly improve the company’s status quo.
Passengers are in every business, in almost every team and are often hidden away by a lack of people management (managers this is on you, if you catch the early onset of passengers you can address it, if stays after six months it’s hard to reset) performers or by performances from their colleagues.
Having Potential & Good Is Different To A Passenger
I believe you can have brilliant performers who can take their foot off the gas from time to time and can have a lot on to keep up their high standards, however, allowing long-term mediocrity is going to have a hugely negative impact.
Middle managers have a hard job and motivating passengers can be almost impossible. It’s critical in management and leadership you know who’s adding value and whos detracting from it. This is where you can proactively score performance and output and then address them regularly.
Blending quant and qual with real work examples is critical to influencing, improving performance or replacing passengers.
Passenger True Impact
Passengers are often hindering your department’s performance, they are coasting, and passengers often rub off in the wrong way and then bring on others for their ride and it can then spill over into other members of the team. Remember team members mimic behaviours especially hard and high performers who feel they are being taken advantage of.
Why A No-Passenger Principle?
Principles are what people can get behind, and agree on and they can lead behaviours.
Long-time readers will know I am a huge supporter of principles, I have:
Recommended leadership principles for each leadership team to agree on principles they are held accountable to,
Suggested you create departmental principles for each department to hold themselves accountable to each other and their colleagues
When you look to create your principles or look at revisiting your principles (it’s annual planning for most larger companies in August), you should question what you really need and what makes the business better and why no passengers are critical to reset expectations and drive the business forward at every given opportunity.
Principles are written up, formalised, put up in the office and shared so frequently the whole company should be able to repeat on request without any effort or hesitation. Being a pointer isn’t enough and this is when HR will likely have to be called in to help when principles are there to support managers and colleagues.
This week’s focus action is to consider adding a no-passenger principle to your business and being clear on what behaviours work within your business and which behaviours will not be accepted.
Understanding how your department members gain energy and lose energy
How your team leads are motivated
And where everyone’s energy levels are
Here is how I break energy down further
Ramp Up For Important Meetings
I am a person who is full of energy in the morning but mid-afternoon I have a harder time doing my best work, I attempt to book important meetings earlier in the day and restrict my caffeine intake to coincide with the most important meetings
I have been known to get hangary, which means I need to eat fairly regularly and need energy from the food to help me post lunch. Knowing which foods provide you energy and which reduce energy, it will be important to improving your output and being present in meetings and when making important decisions
I ramp up with caffeine, I ramp up with preparation for the meetings and often I will walk to bring up the heart rate and help you to think more clearly.
Energy Matching
As a coach you are either supposed to bring the energy and take levels higher or match the person you are coaching. Very often I will match coaching clients’ energy to ensure it aligns with how they feel and then raise if they need to take part in more specific skill drills
Many video-based meetings can feel like a slog, there is a lot written about zoom fatigue and mirror anxiety but a small shift and delay can feel like a lot, it is important to call this out and match the energy or call it out to try and ensure everyone is equally invested (hard I know but in trust-based organisations, this is not a too far removed)
Walk-and-talk meetings are often a great way to energy match and equal the conversation. Walk-and-talk meetings are often an easy way to remove any tension and matching strides is a simple way to energy match
Energy Zapping
We have all been in meetings or when working in the office and someone’s negative demeanour or negative attitude wipes out the team’s energy, it is important to learn what zaps your energy and who can zap your energy.
Being able to talk to your colleague with negative energy can be challenging, if you can discuss this, please do directly, if not attempt to help them recognise they might not be helping the collective (seek HR help required)
When you are sat in a bad meeting you can feel frustrated and see your energy level deplete, MRS aka meeting recovery syndrome is an essential area which many are unaware of and do not control by scoring and reflecting on the quality of the meeting. Ensure poor meetings and frustrating meetings are addressed and you personally make personal reviews and notes on meetings that create MRS. This is where I recommend conducting a calendar auditand being ruthless in owning your time and energy levels.
Energy Supplying
Do you have someone within your team (first team or your own department) that whenever you chat or work with them – they boost your energy, they make you feel like you need to take action or can improve something just by spending a short amount of time with them? I can name five on the spot and often wish I could collaborate with them when low on energy. These energy givers are invaluable collaborators and ensuring you match their energy or give back is critical to a high-functioning and performing team
As mentioned earlier, food and drink are vital areas of giving you energy. There are a number of ways you can incorporate this into meetings and working sessions, by providing healthy snacks (allergies to be remembered) and getting the opportunity to add a buffer to get a drink and/or snack (even a FIKA break) to manage levels and give you the energy
Often with away days and strategic getaways you will actively see people’s energy drop and when they hit caffeine walls, most would then dive into the sugary treats and then have a large lunch, this would mean a real crash or slump after lunchtime. There are typically drinks and dinner in the evening the following day will be a write-off for many. It is important you understand this cycle and supply better snacks (fuel), book in breaks (powering through isn’t a smart default) and stop people just sitting around a boardroom table or a hotel’s basement conference room and getting out and stretching your legs, reduce cognitive boredom and improve your oxygen flow
When you set the agendas and running orders you should consider what decisions are made and when and how the sessions can complement energy sources
I used to hate looking at the agenda and knowing my annual strategy presentation or my business lines financial request was after 4 pm. This was knowing everyone would have low energy, and low attention and knowing that the most important decisions are made when people are more switched on and energy levels are higher (despite many late-night emails and chats most decisions are made in the workday apart from in crisis)
This week’s focus action is to understand how to control your energy, how to make other people aware of this and where you can tweak your offsites and workshops to be more energy aware.
