Back in early 2009, in the depth of recession, an old friend invited me to dinner and I found myself sitting next to Gordon Ramsay. He was exactly the same as he comes across on his various TV shows: direct, curious, opinionated, funny – an excellent dinner companion. On top of all that, he had […]

I’ve stopped asking people, “Are you busy?” Because it seems everybody is, all the time. Perhaps a better question is, “Are you good or bad busy?” When I asked one of our members this question last week, a lesson from former GCHQ spy and business author, the late Brian Warnes, popped into my mind, (which […]

Picture a beach, with waves crashing onto it, roughly 7-8 a minute. Note that’s every minute of every day and night – over 10,000 in 24 hours. Imagine the impact that has over many years. Now see yourself at the sea edge with a bucket of water, trying to eke it out with a drop […]

It’s highly likely that a significant number of the 6,487 subscribers to four-i won’t read this. So I could get upset that the email we take time to write, craft, produce and send out every Monday at 7am, (week in, week out, for almost a decade now), will end up in junk or people will […]

At a board meeting last week, one of the other non-executive directors noted the considerable number of planned improvements and iterations to the company’s software, marketing, sales process, recruitment, onboarding, (and more), and commented: “Tweaking is hard work you know.” It led to a very different conversation. To read the rest of this newsletter please […]

How you feel about your business is broadly down to two things: your results and how they compare to your budget (ie expectation). In no small part thanks to the doomsayers, and their extremely negative predictions, many people started the year with low expectations and consequently are feeling quite chipper as to how things are […]

The words of Jeff Faulkner, my MD at Barratt when I was promoted to Sales Director, still haunt me: “Peter, remember though, Sales is too important to leave to the Sales Director.” I was crestfallen. Having just secured my dream role, I was knocked back and felt empty – but now I realise he was […]

Broadly, there are three kinds of change: Incremental, Step and “Game” Incremental change should be constant – the Japanese call it Kaizen, “good change” or continuous improvement. But sometimes this isn’t enough, and a stepchange is required, something much more significant. And then, every so often, something even bigger and typically much bolder is required […]

I’ve worked with many successful business people for over four decades. They are each individual and have their own particular strengths, but there’s a few things most of them have/do, and one that’s common for each and every one of them – indeed, just based on the people I’ve had the good fortune to coach, […]

Samuel Johnson’s allegorical tale, ‘The Vision of Theodore’, provides a warning of the dangers in the pursuit of happiness, via a character named ‘Habit’ who would cleverly bind the unwary in chains; and then, once bound, would take them to the “caverns of despair”. “It was the peculiar artifice of Habit not to suffer her […]