A sharp, candid weekly executive summary covering growth strategy, leadership, board dynamics, market signals and the conversations shaping modern business.
AI
Your People Are Already Using AI Microsoft research shows 52% of knowledge workers hide their use or AI from their managers. Data is flowing to external systems without governance. Contracts are being drafted, code is being written and emails are being sent through tools your IT department
Leadership
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.
AI
I can't face another bar, restaurant or event. I don't know what it's like in your industry, but in mine, it's all about network. For the last three weeks, it's been black-tie dinners, pub meetups, parties, lunches and glaze-eyed breakfasts. I gave up drinking alcohol a couple of years ago
AI
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
AI
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
Leadership
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
Leadership
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
Growth
In my opinion, this is fishing. Spey casting for salmon on the River Tweed. You can barely see me in this photo because I have succeeded in my mission of getting away from people. But now I have two young sons who want to come fishing with me, today's fishing trips are less about listening
Growth
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
AI
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
