1st Formations

10 advanced techniques for failing in business. (The quiet, elite-level ones.) 1️⃣ Surround yourself with people who need your approval. They’ll never tell you your strategy is terrible, which is perfect, because you didn’t want to hear it anyway. 2️⃣ Mistake ‘being busy’ for ‘being wanted’. Confuse demand for your product and demand for your time. They are not the same, but it feels nicer if you pretend they are. 3️⃣ Prioritise harmony over reality. Avoid conflict at all costs so that problems can multiply politely, quietly, and without interruption. 4️⃣ Reward loyalty over competence. Choose people who make you feel safe, not people who make you better. 5️⃣ Delegate decisions… but keep all the authority. That way, your team is responsible for outcomes but never allowed to influence them. An excellent recipe for stagnation. 6️⃣ Confuse emotional comfort with good judgement. If an idea makes you anxious, call it ‘not aligned’. If it reassures you, call it ‘vision’. 7️⃣ Use data as decoration. Build dashboards, charts, and reports, just don’t let any of it actually change your mind. 8️⃣ Collect smart people, then ignore them. Build a team you can be proud of, then make every important decision alone anyway. 9️⃣ Optimise for looking smart. Speak vaguely. Use jargon. Say things that sound insightful but don’t commit you to anything measurable. 🔟 Stay loyal to decisions long after you’ve outgrown them. Bad ideas don’t kill companies. Emotional attachment to them does. Most businesses don’t collapse suddenly. They fail because they quietly, consistently choose the option that feels good over the one that works. And that’s an advanced technique. 👉 Follow Graeme Donnelly for leadership insights, strategic clarity, and the occasional reminder that most failures are self-inflicted. ♻️ Repost this to share with someone brave (or crazy) enough to start something. #ThoughtLeadership #Startups #BusinessAdvice #Entrepreneurship #Founders #BusinessTips #1stFormations

Why does Canada produce economic leaders like Mark Carney… and we put a former HBOS customer relations manager in charge of the UK economy? It’s a genuine question, and one worth asking as the Budget approaches. Our Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is responsible for steering a £3 trillion economy through some of the toughest financial conditions in decades. Yet when you examine her career before entering politics, it raises legitimate questions about how we select the people running one of the most complex departments in government. Reeves did a graduate scheme at the Bank of England and later held a role at HBOS, which, after recent corrections, was found to have been in customer relations and complaints management, rather than economics. Her CV has been “clarified” more than once in recent months. Meanwhile… Canada has Mark Carney. Canada benefits from the leadership of someone like Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of Canada and Governor of the Bank of England. A heavyweight economist with decades of real-world financial, regulatory, and crisis-management experience at the very highest level. Canada gets a world-class economic operator. We get… someone with a background in customer service. It’s not personal. The question: Why does the UK routinely place people with limited sector expertise at the helm of massive government departments? It’s not just the Treasury. Across Westminster, ministers are routinely given roles in areas they’ve never worked in, and then moved every 18 months, just as they’re beginning to understand what they’re responsible for. No business would ever operate like this, and no serious company would appoint leaders with so little relevant experience. And yet we run a country this way. What we need: ✅ Competence over connections ✅ Expertise over political convenience ✅ Long-term planning insulated from election cycles ✅ People with real-world economic experience in economic roles Canada gets this right. We could do the same if we chose to. 👉 Follow Graeme Donnelly for straight-talking insights on leadership, economic thinking, and building businesses that actually work. ♻️ Repost this to share with someone brave (or crazy) enough to start something? #Founders #BusinessLeadership #UKEconomy #ThoughtLeadership #Entrepreneurship #1stFormations

We’ve become a country that can’t get things done. We plan. We debate. We consult. But we rarely deliver. It took nearly 40 years to open Crossrail. We’ve spent £40 billion on HS2 and laid zero miles of high-speed track, while China has laid 48,000 kilometres in the same time. The Kent–Essex tunnel? £300 million just to get through planning, with 359,000 pages of documentation. Meanwhile, Norway built the world’s longest road tunnel for a third of that cost, and actually finished it. We call it democracy. But it’s become paralysis. We’re tangled in red tape, consultations, and committees - while politicians promise growth, then tax the people who could deliver it. Britain doesn’t lack talent. It lacks vision and the systems to act on it. If we want to get things done again, we need to: ✅ Plan long-term: Create a 25-year national infrastructure roadmap insulated from election cycles. ✅ Simplify and speed up planning: Cut the bureaucracy that kills progress. ✅ Invest strategically: Back sectors that drive growth and productivity, not political headlines. ✅ Respect business: Treat doers as partners, not payers. We don’t need or want to be China, but we can learn from its ability to deliver. “In the end, we will be defined not by what we planned to build, but by what we actually built.” - Unknown Britain once led the world in building things. We can do it again, if we can remember how. Where do you stand on this? Do you agree, or think Britain’s on the right path? 👉 Follow Graeme Donnelly for more honest perspectives on leadership, progress, and building what works. ♻️ Repost this to share with someone brave (or crazy) enough to start something? #BrokenBritain #GetThingsDone #Leadership #Infrastructure #PlanningReform #Growth #1stFormations

"I was looking for a job, and then I found a job and heaven knows I'm miserable now." - The Smiths. I’ve always loved that line, partly because it’s darkly funny, but also because I’ve lived it. In my early career, I was a quantity surveyor, and to say I was miserable would’ve been an understatement. I hated my job. Every day felt like I was slowly fading into a version of myself I didn’t recognise, with the realisation that I was working on someone else’s success. I thought I was lazy, not too bright - just another ordinary Joe living for weekends and hobbies, because that was the only time life felt like mine. The company had no plans for me. Like the song says, they didn’t care if I lived or died. After 12 years of that, at the age of 30, I decided to take a chance and go out on my own. And honestly, that’s when my life started. Entrepreneurship became about finding meaning and purpose in my work. Building 1st Formations gave me something I’d never had before: Ownership of my future and a clear connection between what I do and why I do it. It didn’t make life easier, but it made it mine. The lessons learned: ✅ Security means nothing if it costs you your spark. ✅ You’re not lazy - you might just be uninspired. ✅ Misery can be a message. Sometimes it’s life’s way of telling you to do something else. I didn’t find a job. I found a purpose. And heaven knows - I’m not miserable now. 👉 Follow Graeme Donnelly for more honest stories about work, purpose, and building something that matters. ♻️ Repost this to share with someone brave (or crazy) enough to start something? #Entrepreneurship #CareerChange #Inspiration #LifeLessons #Startups #Leadership #SmallBusiness #TheSmiths #Morrissey

The Glasgow pub paradox. Back in the 90s, in Glasgow, I watched a young entrepreneur open a pub that became the place to be. It was packed every night, queues down the street at weekends. Everyone said he had the magic touch. Encouraged by his success, he opened a second pub. Then a third. Then a fourth. But none of them worked. The crowds never came. Most people assumed he’d chosen poor locations or spread himself too thin. Logical guesses, but they missed the real reason. He never truly understood why the first one had worked. He believed it was down to his talent, but the success may have come from a combination of several different factors. He tried to repeat what he’d done, but not what had made it work. The lessons: ✅ Before you scale, understand why it worked. ✅ Question your wins as much as your failures. ✅ Stay humble – never assume you’ve got it all figured out. As Brent Hoberman, co-founder of lastminute.com, once said: “When something works, founders tend to scale quickly - but the real edge comes from knowing exactly why it worked in the first place.” The moment you take time to understand why something succeeded, you start building the ability to do it again. This time deliberately, not accidentally. 👉 Follow me for more stories about business, and the small truths that make or break success. ♻️ Repost this to share with someone brave (or crazy) enough to start something? #Entrepreneurship #BusinessLessons #Leadership #GrowthMindset #Startups

This one’s for the founders. The mad, the bad, the crazy. The obsessed. The outliers. The beautifully abnormal. So many of us who choose this path don’t fit the conventional mold, and maybe we never did. Many founders are neurodiverse: living with ADHD, dyslexia, or simply wired in a way that the world hasn’t always understood. We are not ‘normal’. But that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us. It means we’re different. And in that difference lies our strength. That unique wiring makes us driven, creative, obsessive, and sometimes we see things that others miss. It made my school days difficult and my 9-to-5 job unbearable, but it enabled me to build something. Being a founder means you: ✅ Launch products that solve problems. ✅ Employ people. ✅ Carry massive pressure. ✅ Sacrifice more than most will ever know. It is more than a job - it’s a shared identity. A community. A sense of belonging with other misfits who just want to make a dent in the world. So, if you're feeling a little too intense, too focused, too different, know this: ✅ That’s your strength. ✅ Don’t hide your difference. ✅ Don’t downplay your obsession. ✅ Celebrate and embrace it. Normal didn’t build anything or take any risks. But you did. 👉 Follow me for more unfiltered insight into the ups, the downs, and the beautiful chaos of building something meaningful. ♻️ Repost this to share with someone brave (or crazy) enough to start something? #FoundersSeries #NeurodiverseFounders #Entrepreneurship #ADHD #Dyslexia #Startups