About / Brent Pattison
The KBS
story.
Help people
grow and improve.
A lifetime of learning. More than twenty years developing leaders. And a belief that better businesses help us build better lives together.
Here’s how it came together ↓
01 / THE INSTINCT
Common sense.
Made usable.
I’ve always wanted to understand how things work. History, economics, business, human behaviour. I study the ideas, look for the first principles, and then ask myself: how do I explain this so someone can actually use it?
That instinct followed me through university, through my working life, and into teaching other leaders.
A lot of what I teach is common sense. Unfortunately, common sense isn’t so common. Knowing an idea and putting it into practice are two different things.
The work is in making it clear enough to apply. That’s what Keep Business Simple means to me.
02 / THE FOUNDATIONS
People.
Product.
Profit.
My interest in leadership goes back to studying history in high school. I kept seeing how much difference a leader could make, for better or worse.
I saw it in the restaurant where I worked for five years. In teachers and professors I respected. In my bosses. And in the books and leadership training I kept coming back to.
Different settings. Different people. But the same lessons kept showing up: understand what matters to people, see things from their perspective, help them succeed, and appreciate what they contribute.
One idea from my early leadership training stayed with me: People, Product and Profit. Put people first. Help them do work that creates value for customers, and you build the foundation for a successful business.
I kept asking what those three outcomes needed underneath them. That thinking developed into the 3P Business Success Pyramid: Leadership, Management and Coaching. A framework I could explain, teach and use.
03 / LEARNING BY LEADING
It started with
75 people.
In 2004, I was given the opportunity to build a contact centre for our first program with Sprint. The mandate was straightforward: build a team of 75 people and do a good job.
We gave that team a shared purpose. We wanted to be number one. We wanted to outperform the competition because that was how we would grow the business and create opportunities for our people.
And it grew.
In less than ten years, the operation had grown to around 4,000 employees across six countries, becoming Sprint’s largest provider of customer support.
As more leaders took responsibility for the operation, my own job changed. I was delegating decisions to managers, directors and vice presidents. More and more of my time went into helping them lead.
I travelled from site to site, teaching the same fundamental concepts and refining how I explained them. I recently found a leadership course I developed around 2004. People, Product and Profit were there from the beginning.
04 / THE RESPONSIBILITY
What makes
a great boss?
After all that teaching, I kept coming back to two things a boss does: makes decisions and communicates them.
That sounds simple. Doing it well takes work.
An informed decision uses the evidence available and connects back to the purpose of the business. An accountable decision means owning the outcome, including the work you’ve delegated.
If someone struggles or leaves, I believe a leader needs to look at their own part. Did I hire the right person? Set clear expectations? Train them? Support them? Coach them?
And communication starts with understanding the person in front of you. What matters to them? What are they trying to accomplish? Are you listening? Are you earning their respect and building trust?
You can tell people what you expect. But if you accept a leadership role, you also accept responsibility for helping them grow and improve.
A great boss makes informed and accountable decisions and effectively communicates those decisions to create win-win-win outcomes for the People, Product and Profit of the business.
05 / PUTTING IT INTO WORDS
Why I wrote
PRAISE.
About a month after leaving iQor, I started bringing my ideas together. I wasn’t certain what came next. I considered buying a business. I knew I wanted to share what had worked.
When I asked myself what I had really been teaching all those years, I kept coming back to coaching.
Supervisors coach employees. Managers coach supervisors to become better coaches. Directors develop their managers. That responsibility runs through every level of the business.
Ultimately, it reaches the people serving the customer. If we want customers to feel happy, valued and satisfied, we need to help those people succeed.
PRAISE became a way to put the coaching system I had spent years refining into other people’s hands. I wrote it for anyone responsible for leading and managing people.
When I sign a copy, I personalize it. But some version of the same thought always finds its way in: help your people grow and improve.
That work also fed into the full leadership and management training program I brought together in 2024, now called Leadership Aligned. It continues what I’d already spent more than twenty years doing: helping leaders make better decisions, communicate effectively and align their teams around the purpose of their business.
06 / THE BIGGER PURPOSE
Better business.
Better lives.
I love commerce. I love capitalism. I believe the exchange of value is fundamental to the innovation, security and abundance we enjoy.
That’s why making businesses better matters so much to me.
Better leaders help their people grow and improve. Those people help build stronger businesses. And successful businesses can create more opportunities for people, families and communities.
To me, that’s the point of the work. The value a business creates gives people the opportunity to enjoy their lives, spend time with friends and family, and contribute to their communities.
Keep Business Simple brings together my consulting, frameworks, book, training and tools around that purpose. Help people lead better. Help businesses work better. Help people build better lives together.
07 / THE PERSON BEHIND IT
I love people,
man.
I love making people smile. I love having fun with people. I love building connections.
In every country I’ve visited, every business I’ve worked in, and every activity I enjoy, it’s the people who make it matter.
That’s where Keep Business Simple and Keep Fun Simple meet for me. Business helps create the opportunity. Sharing life with other people is what makes that opportunity worthwhile.
I love nature too. But even then, it comes back to the people.
I love watching the sunset, but it’s so much better when I get to enjoy it with other people.
Let’s put it to work
Help your people.
Grow your business.
That’s why I do this. If you’re trying to build a better business and help the people in it grow and improve, let’s talk.