Careers

Guidance on career growth, reinvention, job searching, personal branding and building the mindset needed to progress in a rapidly shifting job market.

Winter Mindset: Why The Season Tests Us Wellbeing

Winter Mindset: Why The Season Tests Us

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

Dan Ilett · 4 min read min read
Moses Itauma: The Heavyweight's Executive Summary on Life Downtime

Moses Itauma: The Heavyweight's Executive Summary on Life

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.

Dan Ilett · 8 min read min read
Christmas Drinks: You're Invited Downtime

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
School Fees, Flatlining and Farcical PR Events Growth

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
Confidence: What's Killing the Economy Wellbeing

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
The Moses Itauma Interview Leadership

The Moses Itauma Interview

Later this month, I'm interviewing the heavyweight boxing challenger Moses Itauma in front of a live audience in London. At just 20 years old, Moses Itauma is unbeaten in 13 professional fights, 11 by knockout, and already ranked the number one contender by two of the four major

Dan Ilett · 1 min read min read
What CEOs Want: The 2025 Guide to the Great Unknown Leadership

What CEOs Want: The 2025 Guide to the Great Unknown

You’ve already seen the signs: * A record wave of CEO resignations in 2024 as leaders walk away from roles that no longer come with a playbook. * CEOs calling other CEOs for real-world answers - cutting past consultants and boards/ * The widespread rejection of default platforms and

Dan Ilett · 1 min read min read
The Gen X Question for Gen Z Leadership

The Gen X Question for Gen Z

I posed a question on TikTok last week: If you were 18 today, with your current knowledge, what would you do? University? Travel? Something else? It sparked hundreds of responses. The aim was to help Gen Z make confident decisions in a world that’s nothing like the one we grew up in. Many

Dan Ilett · 2 min read min read
If you need introductions, just ask... Leadership

If you need introductions, just ask...

Many people are currently out of work and in need of support. It's brutal out there. As you know, I've run the Growth Blockers research on corporates and more recently have been pulsing for TikTok feedback. People are starting to lose hope. Unfortunately, ATS systems and LinkedIn aren’t

Dan Ilett · 3 min read min read
3 events for your diary... Downtime

3 events for your diary...

For keen-eyed readers, you'll have noticed some changes in our events and dates etc. That's because we realised we need to buy you a drink and ask you what's valuable to you before we go big on events. So we’d like to invite you to the Big Intro of The Executive Summary’s event series at a

Dan Ilett · 2 min read min read
Has talent moved to TikTok? Leadership

Has talent moved to TikTok?

Last Friday evening at 10pm, I was invited to join a TikTok live. My Susan Boyle moment had finally arrived. No, it was not the tortilla challenge. It was a session with hundreds of graduates and students who wanted careers advice. Engagement was off the charts. 10pm. Friday. I am new to

Dan Ilett · 4 min read min read