Watch
Ideas worth
pressing play on.
Short films and long-form conversations on ambition, leadership and the work of change.
Watch on YouTube
Opinions
Essays, arguments and field notes.
Practical, occasionally provocative thinking for teams and leaders.
Who Does the Timeline Serve?
A leadership team was told that changing how they worked together would take eighteen months. We did the core of it in two days. Organisational economics and behavioural science explain why the long timeline serves the firm selling it, and what to demand from your consultant instead.
The Honest Timeline: What High-Integrity Consultants Sell
A client asked me to stay on for nine months after a three-day engagement, and that retainer was honest. The difference between it and the retainers giving consulting a bad name is the sequence: result first, retainer second, and the retainer must contain new work or it must not exist.
The Lessons Nobody Outside a Big Consulting Firm Ever Sees
A tiny fraction of applicants ever get inside a top consulting firm, which means almost nobody sees how the model really works. Here is what over a decade inside taught me about reputation, depth, and the one asset that belongs to you rather than the firm.
How to Build a Consulting Offer That Does the Convincing for You
Chasing clients is rarely a marketing problem. It is what you are selling. Here are the five components of a consulting offer that qualifies buyers before the first conversation, in the order that matters.
Simpler, Stronger, Faster, Fiercer: Three CEOs Are Telling You the Same Thing
The new CEOs of BP, HSBC, and Disney have all made the same promise. Here is what causes the complexity they are racing to kill, and what leaders must do about it.
You Cannot Out-Work a Revenue Problem. You Have to Out-Design It.
Unreliable revenue is not a failing in you; it is a design flaw in your business model. Here is why the pipeline runs dry, why your market is far bigger than it looks, and how a practice begins to refill its own pipeline.
Why Your Boldest Work Should Go to Your Most Relentless People
Leaders are taught to protect their best people and hand new work to whoever has space. It is backwards. A bold target is what attracts your strongest people, and a safe one quietly costs you the calibre of the team.
You Lost Your Job. Now Take What You Learned and Build Your Own Business.
Losing your job is not the end of your career. For an experienced expert, it can be the moment to take everything you have learned and build a practice of your own. Here is why now is the time, and where to start.
You Need to Differentiate Your Consulting Business: How to Find Your Contrarian Edge
Copying an established provider for less does not differentiate you. It makes you cheap. How to find, test, and declare the contrarian move that sets your consulting business apart.
Work for the Sake of Work Is a Breach of Trust
Work that does not add value spends the client's money and trust. The two-question integrity test, why an AI-generated deliverable is a phantom, and why leaving on time is proof you did the job.
The Art and Science of Competitive Energy
Energy attracts talent, clients, and momentum, and competitors cannot copy it. Four years and more than 200 researched lives after I first made that claim, the instinct has a scorecard.
What Happened When I Tried to Lead Like Jack Welch
I adopted the Welch leadership style and it nearly ended my career. On why another leader's playbook is a costume, and how to grow as yourself instead.
Strategy Should Not Lead Your Leadership Offsite Agenda
Most offsites open with the strategy deck and die by constraint. The research on team conviction shows why the first two days of a summit should contain no strategy at all.
Why I Do Not Negotiate My Fee
The honest anchor for a consulting fee is what the problem costs the business while it sits unsolved. Here is why I anchor every fee to the cost of inaction, and why I never negotiate it.
The Generalist's Curse: Generally Useful, Specifically Unremarkable
Breadth feels like the safest play for an independent consultant. In fact it is a curse: generalists pay a preparation tax on every engagement, price by the hour, and deliver shallower work. The evidence, and the three moves that break it.
“Innovation” is How Leaders Dress Up the Change They Were Too Slow to Make
Most talk of innovation is a failure to change, renamed. The honest word is the one that lets a team respond.
Why Your Team Is Slow: Two Nobel Prize Ideas That Explain the Drag
Slow decisions, inertia, and decisions that keep resurfacing are not culture problems. Two Nobel Prize-winning economic principles explain the drag inside leadership teams, and what resolves it.
You Already Know Who Should Not Be on Your Team
The signals are already in front of you. Leadership is choosing to act on what you can see.
Where Ambition Goes To Die
One week, four countries, and the same three patterns in every room. Coasting is the most expensive form of underperformance because it is invisible.
The Paradox of Choice: How I Nearly Killed My Business
I left Kotter believing that knowing every option was my advantage. It nearly killed my business. The leaders who win eliminate options faster than their competition can create them.
What does it take to be worth over $20 billion?
The market added $20 billion to Starbucks the day Brian Niccol was named CEO. Here is the model behind that bet, and the misstep that handicapped the new CEO before day one.
How Ambition Fueled the 2024 Super Bowl
What Stripe and the San Francisco 49ers' seven-year journey to the Super Bowl reveal about ambition: the difference between a vision statement and a team that lives it.