A weekly email from Tim Kitching Theme - It’s about leadership stupid!
Timothy Kitching- Certified Scaling Up Business Coach
** Passionate about high performance cultures ** I build teams of ‘A Players’ ** Mentally Healthy workplace advocate
“A fish rots from the head first”
Anon
The origin of this quote in unknown however the poet Rumi, who died in Turkey in 1273, included this line in the?Third Book of Masnavi, which was one of six books of poetry written in the 13th century:
‘Fish begins to stink at the head, not the tail.’
Biologically this appears to be untrue however the metaphor, in the poetry of the 13th century, was that a poor quality servant was more a reflection of their master rather than themselves. ?Likewise today, a business reflects the leadership being displayed and modelled from the top.
This week was rather busy and I had the pleasure of commencing conversations with some new clients and I love this part of our work. ?I do, however, want to talk about the above quote. ?Poor quality leadership at the executive level keeps standing out for me in our business development work. ?
This week ....
CEO’s or members of executive teams who reach out because they or their teams have recognised that they need some help to take their business or organisation to the next level… and then only want to discuss the changes that they need others to make!
An example of this are recent conversations around values and how critically ?important they are to an organisations’ ability to grow and scale. ?The CEO of one potential client wrote out their view on important values and then presented them to the entire organisation as a done deal…. ? 12 months later these values are nothing more than ‘words on a poster on a wall’ because people had no opportunity to buy into them. ?They also do not see the executive team’s decisions reflecting these values. ?In this case the people are still perceived as the problem by the CEO, go figure...
My lessons from the past week are:
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What are we seeing….
The business sentiment across Australia and New Zealand continues to soften and we are seeing a much more conservative approach across the Market to investment decisions. ?Both the data and our anecdotal evidence is that inflation will continue to drop slowly but the Australian Reserve Bank (RBA), at any rate, will wait as long as possible before cutting interest rates. ?It appears that a recession may be a consequence of this stance by the RBA but they appear to be comfortable with this risk.
The continuing conflict in the Middle East, combined with the economic slowdown in China (very important in Australia due to our resources based economy) and the upcoming US election is creating a level of uncertainty with all of our commerce based clients. ?
A TEDx Talk worth listening to!
Whilst I no longer wait with bated breath for the next Tedx talk to land (the quality of insights and content has dropped as they scaled!) ?Stacey Lauren’s recent 10-min TEDx is great. ?Create you own support group. ?The support, ideas, and accountability a small group provides are key. ?This is something we talk about with our clients as well…
You can watch this talk here
The good, the bad and the ugly!
This last week I only stayed at 2 hotels (I am an Accor Group fan by the way). ?The Ibis Styles in Mt Isa (Mining town in outback Queensland) and the Novotel Glen Waverley in Outer Melbourne. ?Both great experiences with fantastic staff doing their best given the current challenges in staffing hospitality.
Ibis in Mount Isa has attached to it the towns only truly decent restaurant (Giuseppes Cantina). ?It is Italian so I have no idea where the South American ‘Cantina’ fits in however the food was great if you have had enough of pub/bar style food in and around Mt Isa.
Tim is the Managing Director of Critical Factors, a Boutique Consultancy specialising in high performance and growing and scaling organisations. ?They are accredited Scaling Up coaches and use a clear methodology and evidence based processes to help clients. ?They can be contacted at [email protected].