I’ve spent 15 years working with brands.

Airbnb. M&S. Volvo. LVMH. Heineken. Bang & Olufsen. The UN. Rah rah rah. And then the last five working with some of the UK’s and Europe’s fastest-growing scale ups.

I’m not telling you this to be one of those LinkedIn keyboard warriors, we all roll our eyes at. But more to show, I have an informed opinion.

I’ve seen up close when strategy meets:

The six months of runway left...

The CEO changing her mind at the last minute…

The founder who knows exactly what they want but can’t quite articulate it…

The team who loves the strategy. And the rest of the business rolling their eyes…

The pre IPO push…

So, I’ve outlined the 5 problems, I see consistently…

1. Your Positioning says one thing. Your Proposition is doing another.

Your proposition is what the business actually does.
Your positioning is the space you want to own in people’s minds.

It’s normal for positioning to be slightly more ambitious than where the business is today.

The problem is when the gap gets so big that the positioning starts promising something the business has no intention, or ability to deliver on, ever…

You end up with a brilliant brand story that’s disconnected from the business delivery. And the customer experience.

Casper is a good example.

It didn’t just want to sell mattresses. It wanted to own sleep: a sleep and wellness brand rather than a mattress company. In some documents it was described as the “Nike of sleep”, and the ambition was clearly much bigger than selling a box of foam.

Underneath the positioning, the business still had the economics of a mattress company: an infrequent purchase, significant customer acquisition costs, returns and a highly competitive category.

When Casper went public in 2020, it cut its IPO price to $12 from its initial $17–19 range. The wellness story couldn’t make the underlying economics disappear.

And that’s the bit I think brand strategy sometimes gets wrong.

It’s very easy to create a positioning that sounds like the business you wish you had.

But positioning isn’t a story you tell to make the business sound more interesting.

It’s a strategic direction for what the business needs to become.

So if your positioning is about sleep wellness, what is the business actually going to do differently?

What are you going to make?
What are you going to invest in?
What will the product roadmap look like?
What will you stop doing?
What will the customer experience need to become?

And how does this ultimately equate to an increase in revenue and profit?

There needs to be a credible path between where the business is today and what you want it to mean tomorrow.

Top tip:

Make sure your positioning is connected into the business. And if you can’t do it, engage the people who can.

2. Your values are nice… and useless

Honest.

Optimistic.

Friendly.

Outside looking in, it’s easy to judge another brand’s work, isn’t it?….But who’s going to argue against the above…? And that’s precisely the problem. When you’re selling strategy into a room, ‘nice’ words are very easy to get approved. And when you’re on the 8th round, it can be tempting...

I now have 7 principles for positioning, that I get clients to agree to before doing the work. (I’ll share them in another post).

For values, it’s: The Rule of Opposites.

Example: Would you put this on your website?

“We’re dishonest. We’re pessimistic. We’re unfriendly.”

Probably not…

So, telling me you’re honest, optimistic and friendly, tells me very little about how you behave differently from everyone else.

Values (or brand pillars) are supposed to help the business make decisions.

Maybe you’re obsessive, rather than effortless?

Maybe you use heart over head?

Maybe you’re overly indulgent? Rather than overly efficient?

Those should have consequences. And specificity helps.

If you’re oddly obsessive, what does that mean for product development?

If you’re unapologetically indulgent, what does that mean for the customer experience?

If you wear your heart on your sleeve, what do you do that your competitors don’t?

Top tip:

Agree what you won’t do with client ahead of time.

Push hard to get specificity in your values.

And explain the consequences to your client.

3. You think of your audience as a media buy

“Busy millennials.”

“Busy mums.”

“Gen Z.”

“Busy health-conscious women aged 25–45.”

That’s not really an audience. That’s a demographic.

Two 35-year-olds can have completely different values, behaviours, aspirations and relationships with your category.

And there is an important distinction here:

Your commercial market can be broad.

Your media plan can also be broad.

Your understanding of people should not be.

I’m suggesting you understand the people you want to matter to well enough that you understand their values.

I want to know:

• What do they believe?

• What are they trying to achieve?

• What are they frustrated by?

• What do they care disproportionately about?

• What are they prepared to spend money on?

• What do they think is bullshit?

• What are they secretly trying to become?

Approach A: Give them an attitudinal name (+ values)

For an alcohol brand I worked on, we called the audience, Weekend Offenders.

They were good, hard-working people who had their shit together. But the weekend was theirs. Their excuse to be ridiculous. To play. To stay out too late. To temporarily abandon being sensible. It didn’t matter whether they were 28 or 58.

For a flower brand, I defined the audience as Care Warriors.

It didn’t matter whether she was a nan in Leeds or a 24-year-old in London. Caring wasn’t just something she did. It was part of who she was. She had the dates in her calendar. Dropped off the soup. Sent the text after the breakup. Bought the flowers, in your favourite colour.

The point isn’t to come up with a cute audience name. It’s to capture a shared motivation, attitude or worldview (+ audience values) that underpin it.

When you speak to values, you’ll then be able to find a bigger audience, who identify with the why, not the what.

Approach B: A muse (+ values)

A muse works best used in identity brands: think fashion and beauty.

Here you create one person who embodies the world of the brand.

• What does she care about?

• What does she buy?

• What does she read?

• What does she think is embarrassing?

• Who does she want to become?

• And, importantly:

• Who does she absolutely not want to become?

4. You’re distinctive, just like everyone else…

Differentiation is why someone chooses you.
The safer car. The fast car. The great value one.

Distinctiveness is how they know it’s you.
Your colour. Your logo. Your packaging.

So why are we in 2026 and all these new companies (with no legacy BS to overcome) getting to the same place…?

One could argue it’s AI slop.

Or blame bl-anding.

Or say we’re living through the age of average.

And maybe there’s some truth in all of them...

But I think the reason is a lot more boring AND basic

Differentiation is usually figured out in the strategy work stream.

What are we going to stand for? Who are we for? Why would someone choose us?

Distinctiveness is often figured out later, in the creative work stream.

What do we look, sound and feel like?

By the time those two things meet, both teams have usually made enough decisions that changing course feels very expensive, and potentially impossible.

Top Tip

If you’re building a new brand: keep differentiation and distinctiveness in the same work stream, with the same people in the room.

If you’re refreshing an existing one: agree upfront what the work is and isn’t allowed to change and make sure everyone who owns those decisions is involved early.

5. Your strategy stops at the deck

This is probably the biggest one. I see beautiful strategy decks all the time.

Great insight. A moving manifesto. Everyone nods.

Then it gets emailed around and quietly dies in Google Drive. Because the strategy hasn’t actually made it into the business.

A positioning shouldn’t just tell you what the brand is.

It should tell different people what that means for them.

And that means taking it down a level.

Marketing needs to know what to say.

Product needs to know what to make.

Partnerships needs to know who to hang with.

Customer service needs to know how the brand behaves when someone is pissed off.

HR needs to know what kind of people fit the culture.

And increasingly, AI needs to know all of the above.

So strategy need to be translated into a system.

That means understanding how other disciplines and make decisions implicitly and explicitly and then integrating into their systems.

Strategy → Application → Decision → Tool

Start with the strategy.

Then you’re going need to spend time with others teams:

• What does this mean for you?

• What decisions should this help you make?

• Where do you currently have to guess?

There will be a lot they will tell you, and a lot they won’t. So you’re going to have to spot the opportunities.

Then give them something they can actually use.

• A decision tree.

• An agent/bot.

• A set of prompts.

• A character.

• A checklist.

• A briefing template.

• An app

Whatever works in their workflow, not yours.

Because the goal isn’t for everyone in the business to have read the strategy deck.

The goal is for the strategy to show up in the decisions they make every day.

And ideally to make a few of those decisions without needing to ask marketing first.

And this is probably the biggest thing I’ve learnt…

Doing the positioning is only 50% of the job.

The other 50% is making it meaningful to everyone not in marketing.

Your audience included.

Context: Whatsapp voice note from a friend, who is an amazing content creator.

Dolly Parton died this week

Rest in peace to an absolute icon.

Ask anyone who knows me, I have always been obsessed with her. So like many people, I’ve been consuming a lot of Dolly content this week.

One thing that stood out to me. She had the chance to get Elvis Presley to record her song, ‘I Will Always Love You.’

Elvis was her idol. And she wanted nothing more than to record this with him. It was literally her dream come true.

But the night before Elvis’s manager called her. They wanted at least half the publishing rights.

Dolly knew what she had created. She believed in the potential of that song. And she said no.

Then, she cried all night. Not because she thought she’d made the wrong decision. Because she desperately wanted the thing she was saying no to.

She loved Elvis. She wanted the song to be his. And still, she knew what she had created was valuable and she wasn’t willing to give half of it away for the opportunity.

Here’s the part everyone skips to: years later, Whitney Houston recorded it. And it became one of the biggest singles in music history.

But Dolly didn’t know any of that the night she cried. That night, she was just a woman who’d said no to her idol. Sitting in the dark. Gutted. With zero proof it would ever pay off.

Dolly didn’t feel good when she held her boundary

She felt disappointed.
She felt sad.
She cried.

Maybe because when we’re taught about boundaries, it’s always on a podcast, or in an empowering book. So we hear the highlight reels. The end of the story.

And somewhere along the way, we started to believe that setting boundaries should feel empowering all the time. Like we’re Julia Robert’s in Pretty Women. Where we get to go back and tell the person “big mistake, huge..”

Sometimes it might feel like this. But the reality, well for me at least. Is it can feel like sadness, anger, confusion, or simply, w-t-f…..

The feeling isn’t the verdict. Feelings are temporary.

Sit with it. Let it pass. Then look at what happened as data.

Did they respect the boundary? Did you get what you needed? Did saying no protect something that mattered to you? And were you true to your gut feeling?

The more evidence we gather, the more experience we have, the easier it becomes to trust ourselves. We build the boundary muscle. And the self trust muscle too.

Because setting a boundary and feeling good about it are two different things.

Sometimes doing the right thing feels temporarily really wrong.

I broke up with my fiancé on my birthday.

I was 31. Which, at the time, felt like the most relevant fact about the situation. 31 was ‘old.’ And I didn’t want to be single.

I had no fear of being on my own, I knew how to do that, I always have.

But was I ready to leave the idea that I got to present to the world...? That I was someone who was chosen. That I was ‘normal’. That I was hitting the right milestones, at the right time. Gold star, and all of that.

So I swallowed that little voice that kept whispering, ‘it’s not right.’ And instead, I told myself that people can change, things would get better. That I owed myself to see it through.

Finding my Limit

We were living in “a bubble” during London lockdown. Once a week we would clean the flat and then have a drink afterwards.

I cleaned the bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen.He put his headphones on and danced around the living room.

The first few times, I found it funny. Then it became one of those small things that started to become a metaphor for everything.

I’d just co-founded an advertising agency. I was working hard and late. In one breath, I was selfish. I’d aligned myself with the wrong investors. The wrong co-founders. And was doing it all wrong. In the other breath, it was okay for me to pay for most things.

Then there was the addictive behaviours.

The moods.

The sulking, when we (finally) got to see friends again.

Losing (my money) in bitcoin trading… and not telling me about it.

But that wasn’t enough for me…

No, no, no, no, no, no….

The thing that finally did it was a phone call from his boss.

He had walked into work that morning and quit.

I remember putting the phone down and thinking, enough.

And the fact it took me that long to get to breaking point is classic, camel behaviour….

Classic camel behaviour

Camels are stoic creatures.

They can survive in environments that would be completely hostile to most animals, and they can tolerate dehydration to an extraordinary degree. They are built to keep going when conditions are difficult. And they hide their pain, to avoid looking vulnerable and weak to others. They only reveal it when they absolutely must…Or if they’re about to die…..

I have always been proud of my ability to do the same.

I can absorb a lot. I can work through uncertainty. And I can cope with difficult circumstances. I can carry more than I probably should. If something goes wrong, my instinct is usually to work out how to deal with it rather than announce that I am struggling.

This has actually served me very well (at least in work).

It has also, on more than one occasion, been a terrible way to live…

Classic horse behaviour

A horse gives you constant feedback and information. Not because it is weaker, or because it can’t cope. But because when something is wrong, you tend to know about it. It slows down. It reacts. It resists. It bucks….

What it does not do, is keep performing at exactly the same level while quietly approaching its limit.

Some people can be like this too.

If they’re unhappy, you know. If something is bothering them, they’ll tell you. If they’re overwhelmed, they say so. And in the moment too.

I used to find this behaviour slightly bewildering…We all have shit… Why can’t you just.. get on with it?

But I think I understand it differently now.

Horse behaviour isn’t necessarily about having less capacity. It’s about giving people information, so they have the chance to make changes.

And this is the horse’s weakness. Because giving people information is useful. But expecting them to act on it. Or act on it exactly as you would, is where the horse can get stuck.

There is a saying; ‘wherever you go, there you are.’

And this tends to be true of camel and horse behaviours.

I see it play out in relationships, both platonic and romantic... But I’ve also seen exactly the same dynamic play out at work.

There is the employee who tells you they’re getting overwhelmed, when they’re actually only at 70%.

That can be inconvenient, because now you have to do something. So it normally ends up with more reporting, more process and/or more support for them.

Compared to the person who says they’re fine... Well, until they’re at 120%. They’re much easier, initially…. Until the quit without warning. And leave you picking up the pieces. And replacing them is hard.

It’s the same pattern with founders. Same thing with managers. And partners…

So, I guess it’s important to know...

Who you are you?

And who you’re dealing with….A Camel or a Horse?

If you’re a camel

You’re more likely to…

• Say “it’s fine” when what you mean is “I can tolerate it.”

• Need lots of evidence before admitting something isn’t working.

• Are very good at functioning when you’re unset.

• Would rather solve the problem yourself, than ask for help

• Tend to surprise people when you finally make a big decision.

• Keep going, going and then loose it over something small.

• Have been described as independent, resilient or low-maintenance.

Your warning:

Being able to carry something is not the same as wanting to carry it.

If you’re more of a horse

You more likely to…

• Say something is wrong, even if you’re still figuring out what it is.

• Prefer to talk about a problem before you move past it.

• Tell people when you’ve reached (or nearly reached) capacity.

• Prefer an uncomfortable conversation to a private resentment.

• Wonder why other people don’t speak up sooner.

• Get frustrated by people who insist they’re fine when they clearly aren’t.

Your warning:

Giving people information gives them the chance to make changes, it doesn’t guarantee that they will (or can).

Q: “ I scoped for a brand I’ve wanted to work with for ages. They’ve just had funding and are moving into a new category, so it’ll likely touch identity, eCom… basically everything.

I sent the proposal. Then… nothing. For 5 weeks.

They’ve finally come back saying they love my work, but think I’m expensive. And asked me to “explain why I’m so much higher than everyone else.”

I feel embarrassed and pissed off at the same time. What do I do?

Because your worth it

I saw a recent interview with Meryl Streep talking about The Devil Wears Prada. When she was first offered the role, she looked at the number, turned it down and said: “I’m worth double.”

They paid her.

The rest is history.

The internet loves this story.

Mainly because the moral is simple: (if you’re at Meryl Streep’s level) Never undersell yourself.

Unfortunately, we’re not all negotiating from that position.

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In the ‘messy’ middle of your career, there are all sorts of competing priorities.

Sometimes you’ll knowingly work for less because the opportunity itself is valuable. You want that brand on your CV. Or you want access to that category. Maybe you know it will lead to other work.

But, sometimes the budget was fixed long before you entered the conversation. Even if Meryl Streep herself walked into the room, there simply isn’t another £50,000 sitting in a spreadsheet waiting to be unlocked for that job.

And other times, it’s just genuinely hard to know the size of the job.

One that looks like “a campaign” turns out to involve identity, stakeholders, internal politics, product naming, eCommerce, packaging, investor decks and six months of revisions.

……And a whole load of regret for missing out on working with other clients…..

You’re ability to scope the work, and actually do the work are two different skills.

That’s why can become so emotionally loaded.

What starts as a commercial conversation can quickly become a personal one.

What do I think I’m worth? And if they think I’m expensive... what does that say about me?

The important thing is to separate those two questions.

One is about your value. The other is about their business.Those are not the same thing.

Your Fee

Should reflect what you know the work takes, the experience you bring, the level you’re operating at, and the opportunity cost of saying yes.

Their Budget

Reflects their constraints, their priorities and what they believe they need.

Sometimes those two numbers line up beautifully. Sometimes they don’t. Neither automatically means someone is wrong.

Which brings me to the situation at hand.

So when they ask, “Can you explain why you’re so much higher than everyone else?”, I’d try not to hear it as statement, “We are questioning your worth?”

Instead hear it as a question, “Help us understand what we’re buying.”

I can’t imagine anyone else playing Miranda Priestly.

Meryl Streep’s leverage wasn’t confidence alone. It was uniqueness

And this is the bit people often leave out. Because if your thinking is genuinely different, your process is genuinely unique, or your experience means you’ll get to a better answer faster, then comparing day rates is a bit like comparing a holiday Inn to the four seasons.

The more irreplaceable your judgement becomes, the less your price is compared on a spreadsheet.

(Side note, my friend and her experience, taste, and ability to get it right, is a value add).

Remember that pricing is simply part of running a business. It isn’t a judgment on your skillset.

Sometimes they’ll pay your fee.

Sometimes they won’t.

And sometimes they’re just poking to see if you’ll hold the line.

Confidence isn’t quoting the highest number.

It’s being able to explain your number without apologising.

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I ended up working at a very posh boarding school in the middle of nowhere, earning about £150 a week. Accommodation and food were covered during term time. The rest was on me.

I lived with the girls in their final year, so everyone was my age, or older.

And I hated it.

The matron was relentlessly mean to me. The food was disgusting. And my job description seemed to oscillate between washing dishes, being on “anorexia watch” and helping to run chemistry experiments. I lived for the holidays. Not metaphorically. Literally.

During one of those breaks, my friend Chloe and I were sitting on a beach in Barcelona when she turned to me and said,

“Why don’t we just quit? Stay here. Learn Spanish. Work in a bar.”

Three drinks in, this sounded like the best idea I’d ever heard.

We had made the plans. Both our families were fine with it. (I think neither of them wanted to hear us complain anymore).

But, after careful consideration. I decided... better not.

The reason… How would I explain the gap on my CV?

I wish I could go back and shake that girl.

The gap I was so worried about isn’t even on my CV. Mainly because I don’t actually have one anymore.

So why do all the quotes about taking the risk get ignored?

I don’t think it’s because we’re inherently all risk adverse. I think it’s because we’re terrible at perceiving risk.

We’re brilliant at imagining the downside (see: loss aversion).

A gap on my CV…. What if it doesn’t work…? What if people think I’m irresponsible…?

But we’re hopeless at pricing the upside. What if I love it…? What if I meet cool people…? What if I learnt something… ? What if it changes everything…?

And we treat staying exactly where we are as if it’s free. It isn’t, staying is a bet too. It just feels less risky because it’s familiar.

Now, whenever I’m making a decision, I try to price both. The risk of going. And the opportunity cost of staying. Not just today. Five years from now.

It’s amazing how often the scarier option starts looking like the safer one.

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The dilemma:

“"My new boss is a fucking nightmare. He's a massive micromanager. And it's about shit that doesn't even matter. It's got to the point where I'm actually making mistakes because I'm second guessing everything. What should I do??”

I worked for someone like this once. I became weirdly fluent in her behaviour. I could read a sigh from across the office, predict a passive-aggressive pause, hear a stomp and know exactly what mood she was in.

It took me far too long to realise she’d become the loudest voice in my head. And even after I noticed, it was hard to stop. My anger felt justified. After all, she was the problem.

But she wasn’t carrying me around in her head. I was carrying her around in mine. And that only ever hurt one of us.

The issue here is him. Nor is it micromanagement.

The problem is you’re playing his game instead of your own.

Every leader is playing a game, whether they realise it or not. Some are trying to stay in control. Some are trying to look clever. Some need to feel indispensable. Some only care about impressing the people above them.

Once you know the game they’re playing, you can detach from it. And you stop asking, “Why is he doing this to me?”

You start asking, “What’s he playing at?”

Your boss sounds like The Control Freak.

But there are plenty of others. (I’ve put the common cast list at the bottom.)

Call me by my name

Here’s the weird part, bear with me. I want you to picture him as a character. Not Dave from Finance, or whoever. A Minion with a clipboard. An over-caffeinated rabbit that smokes. A robot wearing a cape two sizes too small. The more ridiculous, the better.

Now ask yourself: What does this character optimise for?

If they are the Control freak, they’re probably optimising for predictability. They’ll choose the ‘blame proof’ option over the best one. They’ll choose the measurable over the intuitive. Control manages their anxiety, as much as it gives them power.

Then pick your own character.

Superwomen. Kris Jenner. A chess grandmaster. Yourself. Whatever works.

Now imagine this isn’t your job. It’s just a game. How does your character transend theirs?

Maybe you proactively send updates before they ask? Maybe you CC them in more emails? Maybe you speak in data and facts first? Maybe you ask for their opinion on something small so they stop hovering over the important things? Maybe you stay one move ahead? Pick one thing. Try it.

The funny thing is, once you see the game, it’s hard to un-see it.

Suddenly they’re not some impossible person who’s out to get you. They’re just a character running the same play they’ve probably used on everyone else.

That distance matters. Because you stop reacting and you start choosing.

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Remember:

Your job isn’t to change the character.

It’s to understand the game well enough to stop playing theirs.

If you know someone in a situation like this, send it to them.

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Other Lead Cast members of management

The Control Freak
Every mistake feels like their mistake, so they try to control everything.

The Hero
Needs to be the one with the answer.

The Politician
Optimises upwards, not downwards. Their audience is the people above them.

The Visionary
So obsessed with the mission, they forgot there are actual humans involved.

The Firefighter
Creates urgency, because chaos is where they feel most valuable.

The Ghost
The one who’s conveniently never there when things go wrong, or a tough decision needs to be made.

The Devils advocate
Can find a problem in absolutely anything. By highlighting the negative, they avoid all risk.

The Robot
They struggle to understand or read emotions. Their main concern is getting through tasks on time and on budget.

The Martyr
Measures their worth by how indispensable they feel. If they’re not overwhelmed, they don’t feel important.

The Cool ‘Mum’ or Dad
It’s more important to be liked, than respected.

Side note: Most people are a blend of two or three. I've written these as caricatures because caricatures are easier to spot. Every one of these archetypes has strengths as well as blind spots

Q. It’s between me and another girl on my team for a promotion. She’s definitely more committed. But she’s not liked by many people. The only person who seems to absolutely adore her is my manager. Outside of hiring an Etsy witch, how do I get him to see me as right choice

(Leaving Etsy witches as a last resort)

Everyone thinks promotions are won by working harder. I’m not convinced.

Years ago, I worked with a business director who was roughly the same level as me but in a different role.

She carried herself like she was running the place.

She’d ask questions nobody else was asking. She’d take on tasks outside her remit. She’s speak up. And assume responsibility. She’d think about the whole business, not just the brief in front of her. She even walked like someone who knew what they were doing.

It wasn’t fake confidence. It was more like... she’d skipped ahead in her own head. And she was just waiting for everyone else to catch up.

(AND btw, She never worked late, and never looked stressed).

I only realised we were the same age after spending ten hours delayed at Heathrow together.

Unsurprisingly, she’s now the CMO of a very big and cool media company.

People massively underestimate how much we take cues from each other. If everyone else is waiting to be promoted before acting senior, the person already acting senior starts to feel... senior.

People skills will compound in leadership roles

The second thing. You said your colleague is more committed. Maybe.

But you also said the team like working with you. Don’t rush past that. Technical skills get you in the room. But people skills decide whether anyone wants you to lead it. Especially now in the age A.I.

Now for a cheat. Have you heard of the Benjamin Franklin Effect?

The short version is: when someone helps you, they tend to like you more afterwards.

So I’s ask him for advice. Not fake advice. But something you genuinely don’t know yet.

• How he’d approach a difficult conversation.

• How he’d prioritise.

• How he’d think about the next level.

People like investing in people they can imagine succeeding.

Worst case? You learn something. Best case? He starts picturing you in the role.

Either way, I’d spend less time thinking about the other girl. And more time becoming impossible to overlook.

If you know anyone in a situation like this then, send it to them.

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“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”

It’s a famous quote. It’s been plastered over LinkedIn, business books and management decks for years, usually with Bill Gates’ name underneath it.

The only problem? He probably never said it…. No one can actually find where it came from. Which feels oddly fitting. The internet’s favourite quote about laziness appears to have been copied and pasted by millions of people who couldn’t be bothered to check the source.

I worked with a lazy person once. I know what you’re thinking, so have I. But this person was lazzzzy. (Like this kind of lazy….Worst employee in the office via Hamish & Andy)

He’d turn up to pitches having skimmed the brief in the taxi. Deadlines seemed to come as a genuine surprise, every time. He somehow always had the smallest piece of work, but created the biggest trail of follow-up for everyone else.

He was never stressed. Whilst the rest of us were.

I kept waiting for the famous lazy genius to appear. You know the person who finds the shortcut, or the simple answer staring us right in the face. Or that knack of articulating a really difficult concept into something everyone understands.

But, it never happened. What happened was I got more and more frustrated, doing more and more work.

With some distance from the situation, it made me realise (maybe because of that quote) I’d accidentally bundled two very different people into the same category.

There’s the person who’s allergic to unnecessary work. And the person who’s allergic to work.

The first one is useful. They hate pointless meetings. They question bloated processes. And they find simple ways to see or communicate the complex. They’re not trying to avoid the outcome, they’re trying to avoid the waste.

The second person? They optimise for their exit. Their goal isn’t to make the work better. It’s to make the work someone else’s. From the outside they can look similar. Neither wants to do unnecessary effort.

But one improves the work. The other quietly becomes the work.

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Looking back, there were signs. These are the things I'd pay much closer attention to the next time I'm hiring…..

Signs you’ve found an efficiency thinker

• Naturally talks about trade-offs, not just decisions.

• Gives specific examples rather than broad claims.

• Explains what they learned, not just what happened.

• Can articulate why they made a decision, not just what they did.

• Asks thoughtful questions about the business, customers or strategy.

• Talks about improving things beyond their remit.

• Describes the impact of their work, not just the output.

Signs you’ve found someone who’s work avoidant

• Talks in absolutes (”always”, “never”, “everyone”).

• Keeps examples vague or theoretical.

• Describes events rather than reflecting on them.

• Explains what they did, but struggles, or has to be pushed, to explain why.

• Has an excuse ready for every setback.

• Focuses their questions on logistics, benefits or process before the work itself.

• Talks about being busy more than being effective.