Briefings on leadership, boards and running a company, written for FTSE and Fortune executives.
Leadership
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
Leadership
The executive summary is the most important and valuable paragraph or one-pager you'll ever write in business. It's also the one most people catastrophically mess up. I've reviewed and written hundreds of executive summaries as a journalist and CEO advisor from and with the largest
Leadership
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
Leadership
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,
Leadership
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
Leadership
Last night I went see Barack Obama at the O2. My takeaways: Obama admitted politics has failed people and there were many mistakes. The West and the left became too comfortable in an echo chamber, taking its eye off the ball in many areas He frequently referred to values-based leadership
Leadership
I once showed a board they had a client trying to spend another $30 million with them, and no one in sales, customer, delivery or leadership had done anything about it. There I was, like Rafiki holding up the Lion King to the sun and its worshippers: “Here is your client, who has asked
Leadership
Every time financial pressure rises, ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) is binned. It is the twitchiest of government policies and company strategies. It comes in and out of fashion faster than a MasterChef TV host. The UK just scrapped its green investment taxonomy and pulled
Leadership
The future of software delivery depends not just on how fast you move but on how smartly and responsibly you do it. Software teams are delivering faster but often at the cost of quality. Sixty-three percent deploy untested code and 42 percent lose over $1 million a year to software issues.
Leadership
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
Leadership
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
Leadership
You've probably seen that corporate diversity programmes have been rolled back in a number of US companies. Whether this has truly been driven by legal or political pressure remains to be seen, but CEOs around the world are now being asked to make their position clear. What’s Happening?
