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Quarterly review is already six months late
Most organisations have feedback. They just have it too late. By the time the quarterly review arrives, six months of small signals have compounded into one large, expensive surprise — and the window for response has already closed.
Why Communication Is the Most Important System in Your Organisation
Most organisational problems don’t start with strategy or process — they start with misunderstanding. This piece explores why communication is the wiring that connects ideas to value.
Stop Debating, Start Testing
Ten executives. Six meetings. A thousand-pound broadband decision. An essay on why debate, at every altitude of the business, is cost — and why small tests are the fastest way to move any idea, in any function, toward any kind of value.
Remaining Relevant in a Changing Job Market
At a conference, a senior engineer told me he couldn't find a good job. Twenty minutes later, a hiring manager told me she couldn't find good people. They were both right, and they were describing the same problem from opposite sides.
Why You Shouldn't Compare Teams Using Metrics
In the right hands, a team's metrics are a mirror. In the wrong hands, the same numbers become a lever. An essay on why team-level metrics should never be used to compare teams — and what actually goes wrong when leaders reach down for the numbers.
The only money that matters is someone else's
A startup with £100m in the bank is still running out of money. Every meeting, every experiment, every lesson learned — all of it is cost until a customer pays for something worth paying for. Financial value is generated outside the business, not inside it.
Turning around a struggling team — a six-stage approach
Most struggling teams are not suffering from a lack of activity. They are suffering from a lack of understanding. Before you change anything, you need to see it clearly. This is the approach I have used — and coached others in — for turning around struggling teams.
Mottainai — stop wasting human time, energy, and attention
There is a Japanese word I can't shake. Mottainai. It roughly translates as the regret of waste — but that translation doesn't quite land. It is not just waste. It is the feeling that something valuable has been carelessly lost.
The Subtotal Button — What a Supermarket Checkout Taught Me About Metrics
In the summer of 1996, I discovered a button that paused the performance clock. Within weeks I was the fastest checkout operator in the West of Sheffield, then the company. Productivity, according to the numbers, had exploded. Cash in the bank had not.
How Continuity Builds Trust, Knowledge, and Momentum
A group assembles. A team accumulates. The difference between the two is one of the most expensive things most organisations never measure — and one of the most overlooked drivers of performance.
Why Improving Process Can Make Things Worse
Better processes don’t guarantee better outcomes. This piece explores why improving the wrong system can accelerate failure — and why direction must come first.
Why Methods Don’t Create Value (Learning Does)
There is no single correct way to work. Methods help, but they're not the point. Why feedback and learning matter more than frameworks in turning ideas into value.
Creativity Is a Climate Problem - Why Leadership Isn't About Ideas
Creativity isn't a talent problem. It's a climate problem. Five conditions consistently show up in environments where creativity actually flows — not as theory, but as reality.