Know Your People. Know Your Numbers.
- PG Geldenhuys
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Today is my mom’s 79th birthday. We are celebrating by taking her and some of her close friends to our favourite restaurant, Magica Roma. It’s been quite a year, and we are looking forward to celebrating some positive momentum. In fact, she joined us for a wonderful winter’s braai this last Sunday for Father’s Day, where Cape Town pretended it was summer, and we took the kids to the beach, to church, and alternated between table tennis and soccer practice in the backyard. What a joy it was.
Father’s Day, hey. Cause for reflection, it was. One of the unexpected joys of becoming a parent is realising that your children are constantly watching, learning, and occasionally finding entirely new ways to invoice you.
The boys have continued their little golf ball business and recently managed to sell another 4 bags to a friend of mine. The margins are excellent, the acquisition costs are effectively zero, and their enthusiasm remains delightfully high. There was an attempt at upselling at an inflated price (gently rebuffed), but also an offer of some freebies to sweeten the deal. So cool. In addition, my eldest Matie decided to diversify his revenue streams. Watching the US Open golf this weekend, we were surprised when he appointed himself waiter for the night. The service consisted of delivering Oros juice with a piece of cheese. The customer experience was satisfactory. The kicker came when he promptly presented me with the bill for services rendered. I loved watching Caroline belly laugh, hey.
And I couldn't have been prouder.
Part of this is deliberate. Like many parents, Caroline and I are constantly trying to strike a balance between allowing technology into our children's lives and keeping it from taking over. We need those evil devices to prevent bodily harm and world war 3 on longer drives up to Plett, but that means we also need some firm boundary structure the rest of the time. To that end, we've built a fairly aggressive incentive structure around access to iPads. Educational games first, no screentime during the week, and now I’ve built some custom games on Codex that win them screen time and teach them geography, math and reading skills at the same time. Check out an early effort here.
The fascinating part is how easy it has become to build these kinds of systems. A year ago, creating a custom application to drive behaviour would have required a developer, a budget, and a fair amount of patience. Today, with tools like Claude, Codex and ChatGPT, you can build surprisingly sophisticated applications in a matter of hours. The barrier is no longer technical capability. The barrier is knowing what problem you're actually trying to solve. And as my friend Doug said at Ignite: "Answers are now commodities. But knowing the right question… that’s the future."
Too many conversations around AI start with the technology. Better conversations start with the behaviour. What outcome are we trying to create? What habit are we trying to encourage? What friction are we trying to remove? What decision are we trying to improve?
The organisations seeing the greatest benefits from AI are rarely the ones with the most tools. They're the ones asking better questions. It's one of the reasons I've started onboarding additional support capacity into my coaching practice. Increasingly, clients don't need another presentation explaining what AI can do. They need practical help identifying the behaviours they want to drive and then implementing the systems, scorecards, prompts and workflows that make those behaviours more likely.
When I start that journey with a leadership team, I almost always begin with two simple questions.
Do you really know your people? (And THEIR why?)
And do you really know your numbers? (The ones that protect you, and drive the right behaviour).
The winter season in Cape Town often offers one of the few opportunities leaders have to step back from the daily rush and properly consider those questions. People go away on holiday up to the bush or the Garden Route, hibernate at home and generally stop facetime for a while. It’s a great reflection and alignment opportunity, isn’t it? And what better way to do that than a bit of Enneagram action…
Ah, the Enneagram. An ancient human technology that I’ve come to love. It’s one of the fastest ways I can help leaders better understand themselves, understand their teams, and identify practical opportunities for growth. Trust me, I’ve done my share of assessments. And the problem is that they often stop after the feedback-type explanation that tells you things you already knew about yourself. The Enneagram goes deeper and provides a remarkably useful map for understanding why people behave as they do under pressure, in conflict, and when pursuing goals.
When it comes to goals, my core framework since my 20s has been the 7 Habits. Covey’s seminal book teaches us how to turn vision into goals and into reality, and to learn better people skills along the way… because you stop being a victim, and build some proactive and accountability muscles. What a great framework, and now, courtesy of the new world of Claudebuilds, I’ve managed to, like Maria, combine a few of my favourite things for your viewing pleasure.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing the interface I'm building that combines Enneagram insights with principles from Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. AI has given me the toolkit to now offer these two amazing frameworks as a consolidated solution, not just to my clients but to my broader community. The aim is simple: move beyond personality awareness and into practical behaviour change. Alongside the profile generator, we're also developing implementation guides, coaching prompts, and AI-powered exercises that leaders can use for themselves and with their teams.
If you'd like to get started, you can generate your own Enneagram profile and receive practical implementation suggestions here.
Go on. Be my Captain von Trapp.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll also be sharing toolkits for the second question, knowing your numbers. Self-awareness, empathy and EQ are all super important… at the same time, cash is king, and execution and tracking of financial and behavioural metrics have equal status at my table.
As we move into the cash cycle of EO Accelerator training and many businesses begin their mid-year reset, we'll spend time unpacking the metrics that matter most. We'll explore concepts such as the Power of One, pricing strategy, profit mix analysis, margin improvement, revenue versus cash flow, and the financial levers that create disproportionate results inside growing businesses.
These tools are simple but powerful, and continue to drive my and my clients' businesses forward. Because while understanding people helps you drive behaviour, understanding numbers helps you measure whether those behaviours are actually producing results.
The leaders who consistently outperform are rarely the smartest people in the room. They're usually the ones who know their people and know their numbers.
The holiday season is a wonderful time to work on both.
PG's Pro Tip:
If you're looking for a productive use of some holiday thinking time, try these three questions:
Which behaviour, if consistently improved across my team, would have the biggest impact on our business?
Which number do I review regularly that is interesting but not actually useful?
If I could build one simple AI-powered system to solve a recurring frustration in my business, what would it be?
ChatGPT Prompt:
"I am a business owner preparing for the second half of the year. Help me identify the three most important behaviours and the three most important numbers that will drive growth over the next 12 months. Ask me questions one at a time and then recommend practical AI tools, workflows or automations that could improve each area."
If this newsletter sparked an idea, forward it to a leader who should see it. The best conversations usually start with a good question.
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