Insights on business strategy, decision-making, market positioning and the leadership choices that drive growth, resilience and long-term competitive advantage.
Geopolitics
Would you rather have more hospital beds for people or the latest version of Windows? Ooh, tough one. As patients lie on trolleys in hospital corridors, teachers buy classroom supplies out of their own pockets and councils close libraries, the government is paying billions a year for
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
Growth
The Problem The buyer has begged you to send your proposal to them as fast as possible, hinting they can make the decision and walk you through all the sales hurdles in their company. They've got the power, they say. They're desperate, they say. This is a strategic priority, they add. You
Growth
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
Growth
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
AI
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
Geopolitics
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
AI
“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
Geopolitics
The Executive Summary dinner at the Goring last week was a brilliant mix of debate and divergence. Who doesn't like a showdown of geopolitics with a good beef wellington. Before getting into the how the world is shaping up. Shannon Mahaffey from Origina talked the group about how Big IT
Geopolitics
I'm hosting an Executive Summary dinner at the Goring Hotel in London tonight on Geopolitics and the impact it's having on operational resilience for CEOs. We have some brilliant minds coming - from former cabinet members to chairs of some of the largest organisations. Where the debate is
Growth
Prices are rising on macro shock, but the real shift is structural. Stablecoins, token rails and regulatory frameworks are all hardening. The firms building inside that window now will run the next market. Everyone else will play catch-up. You should care because crypto is becoming the
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
