Workplace – Steve Randall

I’m calling BS on the notion that the economy is causing the retail sector to die

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

What’s Killing Retail?

Quick, get the defib, this puppies dead, pupils fixed and dilated. What’s dying is the business model that bad leaders hold tighter than their quarterly earnings. In a lot of instances, our retailers are only alive due to diligent corporate CPR.

What made you relevant last year, won’t make you relevant this year.

The daily list of retail obituaries brings a tear to my eye. Jobs have been lost, money’s been lost and worst of all – a dream has ended – a dream that started with an entrepreneurial spark.

Three Top Leadership Tips That Work

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

My visionary Dad taught me this early in my career.

When I first started leading teams, I believed my value was in having all the answers. But as time went on, I realized something crucial: the strongest leaders are the ones who admit they don’t know it all.

Here’s what my Dad taught, and i’ve learned, that shifted my approach entirely:

Unlocking Inspirational Leadership: 4 Key Skills to Help You & Your Team Thrive

Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

Let’s help you to grow into the inspirational leader your company needs right now. I’ll share a few simple tips that you can use right now, today to start making positive changes.

Customers are changing, employees are changing, markets are changing. The skills that used to work are changing.

If you’re …

Leadership Series: Wake Up With A Sense Of Purpose

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

This is one of my core principles. Everyday I work hard to ensure that members of my team can wake up with a sense of purpose. It sounds easy, but like most things in leadership – it’s difficult.

It’s a big goal to set. I try and achieve it every day – and to be honest I don’t always succeed. That’s why this is a team task. During the retros and during my walks and conversations with people, I ask and collect information that will help me work out how to make everyone ‘wake up with a sense of purpose’.

This is how we put a bounce in our team mates step, how we make them want to jump out of bed in the morning and how we inspire them to bring their best to work.

Leadership Tip: Inspiring Your Team

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

I was working with a client the other day and was asked how we attract such great talent to our projects. “Steve, you always seem to have the motivated team, the stars… that makes delivery easy”

Whilst attracting bright talent is a focus of mine (who doesn’t want to work with bright people?), we work hard at it, we also work hard at keeping them and maintaining the motivation.

Our underlying philosophy is pretty simple and is broken down into three points that anyone can use. Continue reading Leadership Tip: Inspiring Your Team

How to get people to innovate

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

My plane from Sydney has just been delayed 4 hours. I’ve just finished up facilitating a day long workshop with a high energy client. My brain is alive with ideas, i’m pumped, so what better time to write a blog on innovation.

Ok, i’m going to correct myself right here. You don’t GET people to innovate. As a leader you create an environment where innovation, ideas and suggestions are the norm. Then, using the right ‘tools’ you stimulate and capture innovation.

Innovation, sadly its a term that has been used to death, but I hope that it never loses its importance in peoples priorities.

The days of having an idea then milking the market for 20 years with the same idea are all-but-gone. Companies, and now Governments need to continually be coming up with better ways to do what they do, continually changing what they do, testing, ditching the failures, leveraging the wins and trying again.

… but how to do embed a culture of innovation through our your team, your department, division or enterprise?

I have implemented what I call the ‘Innovation To Implementation Cycle’ which has consistently shown great results – it is not easy to implement, but if you don’t…

I’m going to put some Continue reading How to get people to innovate

Executive support is mandatory for agile

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Over the past 25 years of delivering solutions in multiple countries and multiple organisations I have never had the support from exec like I do from my current client. From the board, to the CEO to the executive directors, to the business… we are backed and supported.

This stacks the odds of makes top down, bottom up change, success heavily in our favor.

It is common for the CEO to walk into the program room, sit down with me and ask Continue reading Executive support is mandatory for agile

Leadership Tips (series) Wake up!

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Recently I am being asked a lot of questions around leadership. It is inspiring that so many managers are now become interested in leadership and even more inspiring that a few are understanding the difference between the two.

… so I thought I would start a series so I can capture my thoughts in one place. I hope you find something that inspires and helps.

As a leader I believe that your role is to achieve a better outcome from your team, compared to if you weren’t there. Now don’t laugh, I have met more managers than I could count that made no difference at all (or worse… they had a negative impact) on the output of their teams. Some managers are reporters, others are enforcers, the a few are leaders.

One philosophy I try to embed is Continue reading Leadership Tips (series) Wake up!

How Spotify Do It – Part 2 of 2

Estimated Reading Time: 1 minute

Everytime I watch this series… yep, I watch them regularly… hey why not learn from the very best(!) I learn something new.

As your level of agile maturity grows you will face issues. Architecture, design, fit into assurance frameworks in large organisations, skill set sharing etc. Spotify seem to have faced them all… and found sweet solutions.

Watch and enjoy!

Continue reading How Spotify Do It – Part 2 of 2

How To Run A Company (or Team) With (Almost) No Rules

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Here’s a thought… If Ricardo can run a successful multi-billion dollar group of companies using his version of Agile, then we should all be striving to instill this mindset into our teams and departments.

What’s exciting is that its not just us dev types who are rethinking better ways of working.

What do Ricardo’s principles and Agile have in common? Well, if I was to pick a commonality I would have to say this…

Continue reading How To Run A Company (or Team) With (Almost) No Rules