Most Friday mornings at 7.00 am I sit down to write this newsletter. It usually takes less than half-an-hour to come up with an idea, write the article and find some song lyrics.
This week, I struggled to think of anything to write. It might be that as I’m full of a Covid-driven cold I can’t think straight, but, to be honest, it’s more that the ongoing barbarity in Ukraine, and the enormous suffering that the Ukrainian people are needlessly enduring at the fascist hands of Putin and his generals, is making me feel that handing out a business insight at this time is, at best, somewhat trite.
So, let me say this instead. Over the past 16 years I’ve had the privilege of working with dozens of different businesses and leadership teams. Without exception, each team has worked with passion, energy and integrity to try and improve the lives of their customers and, by doing so, build a thriving organisation.
Some have succeeded spectacularly, while others have failed completely; most have fallen somewhere between those two extremes.
In the end, though, it doesn’t really matter where you come out on this scale. It’s far more important that you demonstrate the positive values of leadership: resilience, humility, openness, empathy, consistency, honesty, humour, communication and adaptability.
If you can do that, you will have succeeded, no matter the result. And, on that basis, in any comparison between Putin and Zelenskyy, there is only one winner.
Off The Record: Tear The Fascists Down by Woodie Guthrie
I walked up on a mountain in the middle of the sky
Could see every farm and every town
I could see all the people in this whole wide world
That’s the union that’ll tear the fascists down, down, down
That’s the union that’ll tear the fascists down