After many years in the corporate and professional world I decided to take a risk and make a change. I left the high paying job and created my own business.

At the time of making the decision to leave I didn’t really know exactly what I wanted to do, I just knew it had to focus more around people. Over the last couple of years my experience was that the business world had put more emphasis on digital & technology and process & procedures than on people. Of course, these areas are very important, and I am not for one second suggesting putting your head in the sand and ignoring the digital disruption. I would never suggest to a business to not have solid processes, procedures and policies, I consider this to be good corporate governance. My concern is the human element, it seems to be dropping on the priority list.

There is a fine line between procedure and processes that increase work productivity and procedure and processes that become stifling and decrease productivity. When processes become overbearing my experience is that they can suck the life out of people. They can crush empowerment, individual thought, innovation and importantly the overall care factor. Why would we want people to just be cogs in the machine?

Digital disruption is happening, and we need to be innovative and use technological advancements. Why wouldn’t we do this, it is how we have evolved and progressed. It is something to embrace.  What I would like to change is how we talk about digital disruption. We should stop using digital disruption to increase fear and anxiety of the future and instead focus more on how we as people can provide great human experiences with the aid of digital enhancements.

If we put people behind profits, technology, procedures and process we are doomed, not just as a business but as a human race.

How people feel matters. How we treat each other matters. Creating & delivering products and services to help people matters. My message is simple, put people first!

To put people first we must have great communication embracing regular conversations and feedback. We need to continuously develop our emotional intelligence including our self-awareness and how we relate to others.  We need to create learning environments where we coach, mentor and provide learning on and off the job. This is my passion and why I decided to create my own business. I want to support and challenge people to grow and be more successful, I want to help organisations create cultures with great leaders and learning environments that people want to work in and that leads to long term success.