What can westop doing?

A few years ago I asked myself why I got good at hockey. Talent, a bit. My parents, more: they backed something I loved before I could hold a stick properly. But mostly coaches. From my first club in Barcelona to the national team, I only had outstanding ones. They pushed me, told me the truth, and built a way of training that made me a little better every day.

That’s still how I think about leadership. People get better inside a good system, and someone has to build it and lead it.

At an offsite a few years ago I called myself “the people better maker”. It sounded odd at the time. I still think it’s the job.

What they lack is focus. They start too many things and finish too few: a transformation programme, a performance programme, a cost initiative. Each makes sense on its own. Together they are never one system.

So I build the system first: one goal, clear priorities, simple standards for how the work gets done, and a steady rhythm of review. That’s what makes change last. It also shows you what really moves results, and what can go. I start with the same three questions every time. What are we trying to achieve? What has to happen to get there? And what can we stop doing?

Four parts make it work:

• Direction & value

  One clear goal, broken down so every team knows what it contributes. Then sort the work by value: what creates it gets our energy, what only supports it gets leaner, and what does neither stops.

• Execution & learning

  Write the assumption down. Decide when you’re 70 percent sure. Act, measure, adjust, and learn from what happened. Then do it again. That’s continuous improvement, the Lean way I was trained in, run at the speed of a start-up.

• Data & AI

  Measure what matters, and use data to take opinion out of decisions. Use AI to analyse that data faster and better. Use it to take routine work off people’s desks, so their time goes where judgement matters. I build my own agents and automations, so I know what works and what doesn’t.

• Leadership & people

  The hard part hasn’t changed. People still have to want to get better, and leaders have to make that possible, starting with themselves. Every day is day one.