Why building the right people around you matters more than any strategy

There’s a lot of noise online about strategy. Business strategy, growth strategy, exit strategy, investment strategy. Everyone wants frameworks, diagrams, shortcuts, hacks.

What gets talked about far less, usually because it’s less glamorous and harder to quantify, is people.

Not talent in the glossy sense. Not CVs or LinkedIn headlines. People you can rely on. People who turn up. People who don’t disappear when things get uncomfortable, or complicated, or slow.

After years in the Army and years building businesses across property, hospitality, sport, and investment, I’ve become increasingly convinced of one thing: most long-term success comes down to who is in the room with you when things stop being easy.

You can teach skills. You can fix systems. You can rewrite strategy.

You cannot retrofit character.

What the Army teaches you that business doesn’t

Joining the Army young has a way of stripping things back very quickly. You learn early that confidence and competence are not the same thing. You also learn that the loudest voice in the room is rarely the most useful.

In the military, trust isn’t a buzzword. It’s not something you put on a website or a slide deck. It’s practical. It’s earned. It’s tested under pressure.

You learn to read people fast. Not in a cynical way, but in a survival way. Who keeps their head when things change suddenly. Who listens. Who takes responsibility. Who blames everyone else.

Those lessons don’t leave you when you take the uniform off.

When I moved into business, I noticed something immediately. A lot of people talk confidently about leadership without ever having been truly accountable for other people. It shows.

Business allows more room for performance. For image. For bluff.

The danger is believing that performance equals reliability.

It doesn’t.

The myth of the “exceptional individual”

We love the idea of the exceptional individual. The lone genius. The founder who sees what no one else sees and drags everyone to success through sheer force of will.

It’s a compelling story. It’s also mostly fiction.

Behind every business that lasts, there is a group of people doing unglamorous work consistently well. Chasing details. Fixing problems early. Having difficult conversations before they turn into expensive ones.

The businesses that struggle are often the ones obsessed with star power. The best salesperson. The most charismatic operator. The person with the biggest network.

Charisma is useful. Talent matters. But neither compensates for unreliability.

I’d take someone solid, honest, and consistent over someone brilliant but volatile every time.

You can teach skill, you can’t teach values

One of the biggest mistakes I see in growing businesses is hiring backwards.

People hire for skills first and hope values follow.

They rarely do.

Skills can be taught surprisingly quickly when someone wants to learn and takes pride in their work. Values, on the other hand, are slow to change and often fixed long before someone meets you.

You see it in small ways first.

Missed deadlines with good excuses.
Deflection instead of ownership.
A tendency to talk about problems without offering solutions.
A pattern of being present when things are exciting and absent when they’re not.

None of these look dramatic on their own. Together, they become expensive.

The difference between loyalty and dependency

There’s an important distinction that gets muddied in business conversations: loyalty is not dependency.

Loyalty is knowing someone will tell you the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Dependency is surrounding yourself with people who agree with you because they need you more than they respect you.

The second feels easier in the short term. It’s quieter. Less friction. Less challenge.

It’s also dangerous.

The best people I’ve worked with are not afraid to push back. They don’t do it for ego. They do it because they care about the outcome.

If everyone around you always agrees with you, you’re not leading a team, you’re collecting spectators.

Why “nice” matters more than people admit

There’s an odd resistance in business to the idea that being genuinely nice matters. As if kindness and standards can’t coexist.

They can.

In fact, in my experience, the people who are consistently decent tend to be the most reliable. They communicate earlier. They take responsibility faster. They don’t let problems fester because they don’t want conflict.

Niceness doesn’t mean softness. It means consideration. It means professionalism. It means not needing chaos to feel important.

You can be direct, ambitious, demanding, and still treat people properly.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is usually excusing their own behaviour.

Trust is built when no one is watching

One of the truest tests of someone’s character is how they behave when there’s nothing immediate in it for them.

Do they still show up?
Do they still follow through?
Do they still act with integrity when there’s no audience, no applause, no upside?

In business, you don’t always see this immediately. Early stages are full of momentum. Everyone is energised. Everyone is aligned because the direction is clear and exciting.

It’s later, when things slow down or get messy, that people reveal themselves.

That’s why I’m cautious about fast trust. I prefer earned trust. Observed trust.

Time has a way of clarifying things that interviews never will.

Building a tribe, not a hierarchy

I use the word “tribe” deliberately. Not in a motivational way, but in a practical one.

A tribe is built on mutual reliance. It’s not about rank or titles. It’s about knowing who you can lean on and who will lean back.

The strongest teams I’ve been part of didn’t operate on fear or ego. They operated on shared responsibility.

People knew what was expected of them. They knew they were trusted. They also knew they were accountable.

That balance is rare, and when you find it, you protect it.

Why growth breaks teams that weren’t built properly

Growth exposes everything.

If your foundations are weak, growth doesn’t fix them, it magnifies them.

Suddenly small communication issues become structural problems. Small egos become political obstacles. Minor reliability gaps become serious operational risks.

I’ve seen businesses hit a ceiling not because the market wasn’t there, but because the internal dynamics couldn’t support the next stage.

Growth requires people who are comfortable evolving. People who don’t cling to roles or status. People who understand that what got you here may not get you there.

That mindset is rare, and it’s worth prioritising.

The cost of the wrong people is never immediate

One of the reasons people tolerate the wrong fit for too long is because the cost isn’t obvious straight away.

It shows up later as lost time.
As missed opportunities.
As low-level tension that drains energy.
As decisions delayed because no one quite trusts the information.

By the time it becomes visible, it’s often embedded.

Removing the wrong people is always harder than choosing the right ones early. But it’s also necessary.

Protecting culture is not about being nice. It’s about being responsible.

Leadership is mostly invisible work

Good leadership rarely looks dramatic.

It looks like consistency.
Like preparation.
Like having the same standards on quiet days as busy ones.
Like making decisions before they become crises.

It also looks like restraint.

Not reacting emotionally.
Not chasing validation.
Not needing to be the loudest voice in the room.

The leaders I respect most are calm under pressure and clear in direction. They don’t create urgency where none exists, and they don’t avoid urgency when it’s needed.

That steadiness creates trust.

Why reliability beats brilliance in the long run

Brilliance can move things quickly. Reliability keeps them moving.

In the long run, businesses are built by people who do what they say they’ll do, when they say they’ll do it, without drama.

That sounds basic. It isn’t.

It requires discipline, humility, and pride in work that doesn’t always get noticed.

When you find people like that, you invest in them. You protect them. You build around them.

Everything else can be taught.

The older I get, the simpler it becomes

Early on, it’s tempting to overcomplicate things. To believe success lives in complexity.

Over time, you realise it lives in fundamentals.

Clear values.
Clear expectations.
The right people.
Consistent effort.

That’s it.

No hack replaces trust. No strategy compensates for the wrong team. No growth plan survives without people who genuinely care about the outcome.

If you get the people right, most other things become solvable.

If you get them wrong, nothing else really matters.