Business Changing

Profit and Growth Specialist

Insights from Sir John Key

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Insights from Sir John Key

I was honoured to have Sir John Key join us by Zoom, sharing his incredible advice with a number of our Business Changing clients. As someone who led NZ during a GFC and the Christchurch earthquakes, and who now serves as an advisor and board member to some of the biggest businesses in the world, he certainly has some amazing insights and sage advice to share around a post-Covid world.

His view was that we are facing two crises: a health one and an economic one. As well as some interesting viewpoints in what the economic world will look like in the coming 6-24 months, he shared three great leadership tips that I want to share with you:

Sir John Key’s tips on leadership:

  1. What makes people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk great is they’re so driven. Find out what really drives you. Whatever you do, have a plan – what does success look like, can you write it down, do people understand it? What are you all about? Have a mission statement. It will drive you and your decision making.
  2. Be passionate about it. If you love what you’re doing, work isn’t so much work. John work now because he like having things to do and he likes being interested in things. Personally I work (and completely love it) because I am so passionate about helping small to medium businesses be more successful (however they may measure success). Make sure you’re interested in what you’re doing.
  3. Be bold enough to redefine your business all the time, even without external pressures like Covid-19. We’ve got some great opportunities ahead to redefine our businesses, our country and how we do things. As a leader I think you need to constantly re-attack yourself internally. What can technology and apps change for you? Constantly challenge yourself to change and be better and understand your customers.

Hopefully this inspires you in the same way as it did those of us on that call. Plenty of challenges ahead, for sure but also lots of opportunities to do things in ways we’ve never done before.

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