Articles

Is this Britain's Most Famous Cat? Downtime

Is this Britain's Most Famous Cat?

This is Stella. She might look like an ordinary cat, but don't be fooled. She is living proof that reincarnation works. Stella lives in Beckenham, a Southeast London town that was invisible to muggles until ten years ago when Kirsty and Phil made TV shows about what good value it is. The

Dan Ilett · 6 min read min read
Christmas Drinks: You're Invited Growth

Christmas Drinks: You're Invited

To say a massive thank you for your readership and support this year... We've held events at some of the best venues in London this year: The Goring, The Ned, Mr Porter, but for Christmas we're putting on an old-school party in an even older pub. Our venue this year is the kind of pub your

Dan Ilett · 2 min read min read
Overwoke and Underpaid: Can the BBC Recover (Again)? Leadership

Overwoke and Underpaid: Can the BBC Recover (Again)?

Hello Children Today, the squirrels are in the boardroom doing their: Libel Badge. "Everyone," winks Baldrick. "I've got a cunning plan. We'll splice different parts of the US president's speech to make it look like he meant something else." Daddy Pig is taking notes. "Isn't he one of the

Dan Ilett · 4 min read min read
School Fees, Flatlining and Farcical PR Events AI

School Fees, Flatlining and Farcical PR Events

My Executive Summary for this week: stop relying on someone else's platform, someone else's recruiters or someone else's sales process. Build what you own - the audience, the expertise and the narrative. The builders today are the ones who control their own distribution. Use social media

Dan Ilett · 6 min read min read
What You're Missing: Attention Flywheels & Trust Engines Leadership

What You're Missing: Attention Flywheels & Trust Engines

Facebook company pages now reach just 1.37% of their followers organically. That is not a typo. It is however - awful. That means if you build a page of 10,000 followers and only 137 people see each post you publish. Instagram is barely better at 7.6% and LinkedIn company pages make up

Dan Ilett · 4 min read min read
Change Bullies: Using AI to Extract Gatekeepers to Progress Leadership

Change Bullies: Using AI to Extract Gatekeepers to Progress

Let's say one exec stakes their career on building the company's future on one tech vendor. Massive budgets are spent. Three years later, it's obviously wrong. But that person can't allow change because it means admitting failure. So the entire organisation slows down. Months are lost in

Dan Ilett · 4 min read min read
The Prophet of the Stateless Age: What Ian Angell Saw Coming Geopolitics

The Prophet of the Stateless Age: What Ian Angell Saw Coming

A friend of mine runs a boutique consultancy. Recently he told me he's moving to Dubai from the UK. Not for the zero income tax, he said, but he's fed up of taking scrappy projects and being ghosted while his industry suffers and government looks on. In 2000, Professor Ian Angell published

Dan Ilett · 3 min read min read
When Life Gives You Tangles, Play Them Growth

When Life Gives You Tangles, Play Them

In my opinion, this is fishing. Spey casting for salmon on the River Tweed. You can barely see me in this photo because I have succeeded in my mission of getting away from people. But now I have two young sons who want to come fishing with me, today's fishing trips are less about listening

Dan Ilett · 4 min read min read
Confidence: What's Killing the Economy Growth

Confidence: What's Killing the Economy

We talk a lot about mental health, but not enough about confidence. They're two sides of the same coin - and one is being hoarded. Last night, Sir Ken Olisa, the King's Lord-Lieutenant, addressed The Transformational Leaders' Club on social mobility. He made a simple point - give young

Dan Ilett · 2 min read min read
Can You Just Ask AI to Do It? AI

Can You Just Ask AI to Do It?

Cognizant’s VP of Insurance, David Sexton, has forced a hard question into the boardroom. When a hiring request lands, directors now ask not only if a role is essential but whether AI could do it instead. This is no longer an experiment. Sexton points out that much of what insurance

Dan Ilett · 2 min read min read
Bubbles, Kitkats and Broadcom AI

Bubbles, Kitkats and Broadcom

“We are seeing more pilots than Lufthansa,” - Klemens Hjartar, Senior Partner at McKinsey, talking today on stage at Nordic Fintech Week about Agentic AI. (Thank you Ewan MacLeod.) AI has sped up the race to the bottom. No sooner has someone invented a Tony Robbins AI agent to coach you

Dan Ilett · 1 min read min read
A Quick Check-In Leadership

A Quick Check-In

Good morning Thank you to those who came to the Moses Itauma interview on Tuesday. The room was stacked with brilliant people. Moses – a 20-year-old heavyweight boxing challenger with 13 wins (11 by knockout) - taught a room of executives how to think like a challenger. "I wasn't the best,

Dan Ilett · 2 min read min read