Leadership
Can't sleep? Watch this. Better than knockout drops. Hi guys I hope you're enjoying your week. I'm having one of those days where none of my technology works. I am locked out of my email and several other accounts, so am waiting for a brilliant tech support person to fix all my troubles.
Geopolitics
You have to ask, how can UK governments keep getting it so successfully wrong? With 13 major U-turns under its belt and counting, this government has realised its inexperience is costing it voters. The blame - at least a good portion - has landed on the record number of special advisors
Leadership
Over Christmas, I read The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. My friend Todd Wade, an excellent Chief Information Security Officer, gave it to me for my birthday. It's a warts-and-all account of how hard it is to be a CEO and the junk you have to deal with as part of the job.
Geopolitics
The World Economic Forum in Davos dominated international attention with a tense backdrop of US-Europe friction. President Trump launched a new Board of Peace initiative aimed at Middle East conflict resolution but did so without major allied support, raising questions about diplomatic
AI
We have entered what the industry is calling the "Agentic Wars." In December 2025, Meta paid over $2 billion to acquire Manus, a nine-month-old startup that had built something Silicon Valley now considers essential: an AI that doesn't just talk, but acts. ChatGPT and its peers answer
Wellbeing
Being a CEO is highly stressful and sometimes you have to wonder why you took it all on. Hiring the wrong people, not hitting the number, deploying the wrong project - and having to ask 'have you done it yet' about 100 times a day. If everything works, the team did it. If one thing goes
AI
I can't face another bar, restaurant or event. I don't know what it's like in your industry, but in mine, it's all about network. For the last three weeks, it's been black-tie dinners, pub meetups, parties, lunches and glaze-eyed breakfasts. I gave up drinking alcohol a couple of years ago
Wellbeing
Not everyone is okay this time of year. The pressure is intense: family, money and reviewing success or failure can be very hard. And if you’ve lost someone - even harder. One in five adults in England now lives with a common mental health problem, according to the 2025 Big Mental Health
Growth
In the UK, things are winding down for Christmas. If you're in retail or hospitality, t'is the season to be jolly. But for business owners in other sectors, it can be extremely stressful. How many times in November did you hear: "Let's do it in the New Year." The impact of Christmas being
Downtime
Moses Itauma is undefeated at 20 and already thinking like a CEO. He's deleted Instagram, reads business books and lets his brothers handle the arguments while he handles the ring. The knockouts get the headlines. His mindset and his family strength is the real story.
Geopolitics
After all the rumours and leaks, the business community listened with its head in hands yesterday braced for what was due to be another pickaxe to its aspiration. The expectation was that Rachel Reeve’s budget would tax air, breathing, hands, moving and looking at things. Dogs and cats
AI
Before we get into this, these are the pieces I am working on over the next few weeks. * A breakdown of the UK budget (Thursday/Friday) * The Executive Summary Awards 2025 (December) * Board dynamics: the paradox of talent vs teamwork * Opex crisis: the invisible costs your CFO can't find
