In Athletics, this year has seen Sebastian Sawe break the Marathon Record in April and post the first official sub 2hr marathon in 1hr 59.30 and last month Josh Kerr broke the previous world mile record that had stood for 27 years held by Hicham El Guerrouj of 3:43.13. Both incredible physical achievements but I was particularly struck by how Josh Kerr used psychological techniques. He publicly announced Project 222 on 28th March this year that on July 18th in London he would

For the last 25 years with both my own companies and where I am on the board as an investor, I have always valued the benefit of an annual off-site strategy or value creation session where we purposefully chose a location away from the office with phones and computers off in order to spend time working on the business rather than in the business. In recent months, I have been acting as a facilitator for a number of early-stage growth companies for these sessions, which I hav

Leaders should spend their time defining purpose, values and strategy. They should debate organisational design, develop leadership frameworks and invest in training their team members to be the best they can be. All of this is very important, but I also think leaders should invest time and attention to ensure their front door experience is in place as for me it is a strong barometer of culture within the organisation. What do I mean by the front door? It is the experience s

If you watch top tennis players such as Rafael Nadal play a tournament, you will inevitably see him looking up at his coach at regular intervals. Nearly every elite level sports person has a coach as it is well known that in sport no matter how well trained or talented you are, few can sustain their best performance on their own. However, in Business whilst the role of coaches is increasing, every top performer does not routinely have a coach – why is this? I have benefitted

One of the many privileges I have in my role at Mercia Ventures is speaking on a daily basis with people who have been very successful in their field who are either in Executive roles or now developing a portfolio of Non-Executive roles, having been successful as a Leader. I was chatting recently to a Chair of one of our portfolio companies who has been very successful over their career as a Chief Executive and the subject of luck came up. He very modestly mapped out how h

Apple CEO Tim Cook was once asked shortly after Steve Jobs died what was the key thing he had learnt from Jobs - his answer was that “Focus is Key”. However, with so many things going on in a business what should a leader focus on? Over the past few weeks The Founders Mentality book has been mentioned a few times in meetings I have been in, and I think there is a strong argument to say that from a behaviour perspective focusing on maintaining a “Founders Mentality” is the mos

Someone once said to me that if you want to judge a surgeon, watch them operate. If you want to judge a pianist or a sports person watch them perform live and if you want to judge a leader watch how they operate a meeting. I spend a lot of my time in meetings both internally at Mercia Ventures and with our portfolio companies and I do believe meetings are a cornerstone of effective leadership. In my coaching conversations with leaders, I often enquire about the meetings for

In business, the idea that competition is essential for a functioning market is a core concept in economics. Sometimes losing to your competition is inevitable as I don’t think any company, regardless of its size or success, can win every deal, dominate every market, or outpace every competitor at all times. We had a team meeting this week where we discussed some recent missed opportunities and most importantly how are we reacting and what we were going to do about it. I w

Whilst the natural thing for many to focus on is revenue or bottom line profit, the one number I have always focused on which I think is the most important is gross profit. In the recent ZIRP years, many software companies (often encouraged by their VC investors) have layered on huge cost bases in order to chase ARR. Most SaaS companies should be attractive with a strong gross margin of 80% + but as investors assessing new opportunities, we often find it a challenge to asse

I have written previously about the importance of customer experience and since I also wrote that not enough time and attention on the voice and experience of the customer is discussed at company board meetings, I thought I would write about it again. In part it was triggered by a podcast I have been listening to “Invest like the best” which I would definitely recommend. This week their guest was Neil Mehta, a very successful VC investor and Managing Partner at US based Gree

At the end of every year I review what we have achieved and how I have personally performed, always looking at area’s I can work on for the next year. At the start of last year, I decided that amongst other things, I wanted to improve my active listening skills. Active listening is when you not only hear what someone is saying, but also attune to their thoughts and feelings. It turns a conversation into an active, non-competitive, two-way interaction. Robin Abrahams and Bori

I often say that companies are most often bought rather than being sold. What do I mean by that? It is good business practice to review strategic growth options and specifically which additional markets or products/services or capabilities are required to drive growth. Many companies do this across the globe and once decided on the requirements there are three strategic choices: To develop the territory/product/service/capability internally and grow organically; To develo

One of my favourite series I have watched on TV recently is Succession on Sky Atlantic. For those who have not seen it, the series focuses on a media billionaire with three adult children all vying for being their fathers successor. Succession is a challenge that is faced by all businesses whether they be a family owned business or not. I personally believe succession planning is a fundamental element for all organisations for two key reasons – risk mitigation and team deve

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.” I first came across these words when reading about Margaret Thatcher and wrote them down in my notes I keep on my computer for personal development. It is apparently attributed to a US businessman Frank Outlaw in the 1970s and I think these words su

When I was running my first business nearly 20 years ago, I was a member of the executive coaching group, Vistage. One of the many things I picked up, and have utilised multiple times since, is a simple plan on a page template which captures and communicates internally key components of the plan of any business, which include initiatives and objectives relating to sales, product, customer, finance, operations and also and importantly risk. Embracing risk is critical as an ent

I was having dinner with the Chief Executive and Chair of a Mercia Ventures portfolio company recently where we were discussing the challenges of running a company. We collectively concluded that of all the qualities required to succeed, grit or perseverance was the biggest one. We know that founding and growing a company is tough really tough. Steve Jobs once said “I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is

I am on a number of boards as part of my role at Mercia Ventures as well as Chairing a Charitable Foundation and this time of year is budget planning season with most organisations having a calendar or financial year end. Traditional budgeting methods, with their static and inflexible nature, are becoming increasingly obsolete and it is common for modern business leaders to turn to alternative techniques to both develop and manage their budgets in order to navigate the chal

I read a few years ago the concept of 1556 and 1591 regarding continuous learning. This is simply if you read 15 minutes every work day it amounts to 56 hours of learning in the year and if it is every day of the year it is 91 hours of learning! In today's fast-paced world, it is very easy to be caught up in the rat race of every day stuff. However, I think as a leader it is essential to be continually learning in order to seek to stay relevant and effective in our field. Wh

In my opinion, one of the many faceted responsibilities of a leader is to influence the body and brain chemistry of your team members! What do I mean by this? I was involved in one of the many virtual meetings we all have in the post Covid way of working this week, and as I often try and do, we had five minutes of “general chat” before moving to the main agenda. On this occasion, it was great to see that this resulted in multiple participants literally crying with laughter

I often have team members recommend books to me and before Christmas I was recommended “The CEO Within” by Matt Mochary. Matt is a Silicon Valley based coach who helps Tech company CEO’s such as Sam Altman of Open AI to be the best leaders and build the best organisations possible. The book is full of useful nuggets for all company leaders. However, one of the Chapters in particular chimed with me about being on time and present for meetings. Everyone who has worked with m