Stephen Burrell

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Old dog...new tricks!

In my early days of leadership, people centric thinking was not part of my business plan. I was a nice guy, I had a positive attitude but I wouldn’t say to you that I was sensitive to the impact of my initiatives on people. It was all about numbers and building shareholder value, not human value. My early days were very traditional, if I had to fire people - I just did it. I mean, that’s what you do in business! Unfortunately, that conventional thought still exists today, it’s not human, it’s just all about numbers.

I think the major problem with business leadership today is that there is no leadership; there’s a lot of management. It’s a very short-term attitude to just think about people as a resource that you pay and expect them to do their work. What will you lose if you take it from a human perspective? In reality we are responsible for the lives of human beings. And if you want to be cold-hearted about it, people who like coming to work are even more productive. People who feel safe and can trust the people they work with are more likely to offer bigger ideas, take better risks, be more innovative and more productive. That’s a whole host of good business reasons. When you are ready to look at your employees from a human perspective, just contact me via e-mail to arrange a confidential meeting.