What if high performance doesn’t come from working harder, but from something much simpler?
Happiness.
In our latest Get Amplified episode, we sat down with Richard Munro, technology strategist and former CTO advisor, to explore a perspective that challenges a lot of conventional leadership thinking:
Happiness comes before performance. Not after it.
But what makes this conversation different is where Richard learned this. Not from leadership theory. From a career spent deep in technology.
From Mainframes to CTO: Where the Real Insight Came From
Richard’s career spans everything from mainframe operations to the CTO office of some of the biggest names in tech.
And at every stage, he kept asking the same question:
Why is this happening?”
But each time he followed that question upstream, he realised something important:
The real issue always started earlier.
- Problems in operations? → It was delivery
- Problems in delivery? → It was architecture
- Problems in architecture? → It was technology
- Problems in technology? → It was understanding
Eventually, that led to one core insight: It’s not about the technology. It’s about the people using it.
Storytelling Isn’t the Output. It’s the Architecture.
One of the biggest myths in business is that storytelling is the final step.
Richard flips that completely. Before you ever communicate anything, you need to:
- Understand the landscape
- Factor in human behaviour
- Make sense of complexity
- Infer the right direction
- Define what actually matters
Only then do you communicate it.
Most teams skip straight to the last step and wonder why it doesn’t land.
Start With Where. Not Why.
We’ve all heard Simon Sinek’s famous idea: Start with why.
Richard’s thought?
Start with where, not why. Without context, you’re just guessing.”
He raises a really interesting point that without context, “why” can be misleading.
If you don’t understand:
- the pressures someone is under
- the constraints they’re facing
- the environment they’re operating in
. . . then you don’t really understand their motivation.
And that becomes obvious in the strategy, in sales, and in leadership.
The Mistake Most Teams Make
Here’s the trap. Teams focus on:
- features
- outputs
- performance metrics
Instead of asking: What’s it actually like to be in this situation?
Richard shared a brilliant analogy from sailing. 
When a mast breaks in a storm, the priority is to cut it away quickly. There are expensive, high-tech tools designed for this.
But the tool that actually worked best?
A simple hacksaw.
Why? Because in a storm:
- you’re being thrown around
- you’ve got one hand holding on
- complexity becomes unusable
Most companies compete on features. The best ones understand the situation their customer is in.”
All the vendors were competing with each other. None of them were thinking about the reality of the user.
Where Happiness Comes In
This is where the conversation shifts and where it gets powerful. Because the same principle applies to teams.
Most leaders think: Work hard → achieve results → then feel good
Richard’s experience says the opposite:
Happiness doesn’t come after performance. It’s what drives it.”
After leading teams of all sizes, his biggest takeaway is simple: Great teams are made up of happy individuals.
The “Fist Pump” Test
Instead of waiting until the end of a project to celebrate, Richard suggests something different.
Ask your team: “What gives you a fist pump during the week?”
That moment where you think: “Yes. That’s why I do this.”
Because those moments:
- create energy
- build momentum
- drive engagement
You’ll start to find that when people experience these moments regularly, performance naturally follows.
Three Leadership Principles
Richard’s leadership approach is grounded in three simple ideas:
1. Guard your integrity: Don’t trade it, even when it’s uncomfortable.
2. Tackle the problem in front of you: Don’t wait. Don’t escalate. Just start.
3. Choose repeatability over perfection: Scale comes from what you can do consistently, not perfectly once.
Don’t aim for perfect once. Build something good you can repeat 10,000 times.”
Key Takeaways
This episode might start with storytelling and strategy. But it lands somewhere deeper.
Because whether you’re:
- shaping a market
- leading a team
- or trying to improve performance
The same principle applies:
- Context first.
- People first.
- Then everything else follows.
And because we like to leave you with a final thought . . .
Most teams don’t fail because they lack capability. They fail because they miss context and overlook the human side of performance.
Happy teams don’t happen by accident. They’re built deliberately.
