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The candid newsletter read by more than 6,000 leaders from FTSE 350, Fortune 1000 and major organisations. Led by Dan Ilett, founder, ex FT journalist and former FTSE leader.
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The CEO’s job looks glamorous, but it is more “have you done it yet?” than you were led to believe.
If you win, it is everyone’s victory. If you lose, it is all on you. You can’t grow without hiring, and you can’t hire without growth.
“Do AI”, says the board. Nobody quite knows how, and the market is being eaten while everyone works it out.
So here is The Executive Summary, the important few words that tell the board what they need to know.
Our members say it is funny, honest and incredibly useful. Our workshops and executive courses are the same.
Is your board ready for AI? The hackathon is a one-day sprint that gets boards and leadership teams fluent in AI and clear on the decisions they need to make. Your team leaves with its own AI agents, a shared view of what to do with AI and a set of decisions scored against the AI risk register. Chaired by Dan Ilett and delivered by a bench of CIOs and AI practitioners from The Executive Summary and the City CIO Club.
"In a world which is going faster than ever, it has never been tougher to be a leader. Dan gets the lonely seat of leadership and bringing peers together to share ideas is such a good way to crystallize your thoughts."
"Dan's newsletter is the only one I actually let hit my inbox, and I've never once failed to read it. Sharp, funny and refreshingly honest, with insightful takes that make even a non-tech founder look forward to every issue."
"Every week Dan reminds me that leadership is less about having all the answers and more about asking better questions. Thought provoking and nicely crafted, a decent read."
"Dan has built a community that genuinely helps senior leaders navigate the noise. The frameworks are practical, the analysis is sharp, and the network you gain access to is world-class."
"A rare newsletter that respects your time while expanding your perspective. Dan cuts through the noise with precision and a refreshingly human voice. Essential reading for any CEO who wants to stay sharp."
The newsletter the board actually reads.
The Executive Summary is an independent house of briefings and executive education for the people who run FTSE 350, Fortune 1000 and major organisations. It publishes the newsletter, runs practitioner-led workshops, cohorts and events on AI, growth and leadership, and sits alongside the City CIO Club, the invitation-only network for senior technology leaders.
It is led by its founder, Dan Ilett, formerly commercial transformation director at a FTSE technology business and before that an award-winning business journalist who wrote for the Financial Times, the Economist Group and The Daily Telegraph. He was founding editor of and investor in CoinDesk, which went from zero to one million users a day in six months, and has advised IBM, Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Cognizant, Equinix, the UK Government and SEB on AI, dealmaking and organisational change.
Around him is a faculty of practitioners who have run the functions they teach, contributors drawn from the leaders who read it, and the City CIO Club members who test the ideas before they are published. Every course is led by someone who has done the job.
How consultancies will begin to change and what to do about it
And moving from unsure mode to defined and happy
Your framework to highlight invisible nasties for the board
Blaming AI and weak government is so yesterday
I surveyed our 66 webinar delegates on how to sell to the C-suite and asked them: What is the single biggest challenge you face when selling to the C-suite? The number one challenge, cited by 35% of respondents, was access and attention. There are good reasons for this. Channels
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
Over Christmas, I read The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. My friend Todd Wade, an excellent Chief Information Security Officer, gave it to me for my birthday. It's a warts-and-all account of how hard it is to be a CEO and the junk you have to deal with as part of the job.
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
And it's not an insult...
The AI and growth briefing for the people who make the decisions.