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The season of big ambition is here. Strategic plans for 2026 are being locked in. Transformations are being announced. The language is bold. Faster. Leaner. Different. But if you look back at 2024 and 2025, the ambition was likely just as high. The targets were just as confident. If the results didn’t match the intent, […]

The Shadow Message Every senior leader eventually discovers a quiet truth. The message you deliver is rarely the message your organisation receives. You outline a priority. They hear a warning. You describe an opportunity. They hear risk. You share a timeline. They hear pressure. It is never about your intention. It is always about the

There is a moment in every transformation where the penny finally drops.It is the moment leaders realise the problem was never the plan. It was never the capability. It was never the people. It was the narrative. I watched this play out again this year. A leadership team convinced they had great communication, because messages

When we buy for ourselves, we trust our instincts.We walk past the department store and step into the boutique. We choose the jeweller who knows our taste, the tailor who notices the detail others miss, the small brand that feels crafted rather than produced. We do it because quality feels personal. Because care cannot be

A recent MIT report confirms a stark reality. U.S. businesses have invested up to $40 billion in artificial intelligence, with 95% achieving almost no measurable return. This is not a rounding error on an IT budget. It is a strategic miscalculation at the highest levels of leadership. The failure is not in the technology, but

August has a sound. It is the sound of quiet. Out-of-office replies multiply, phones fall silent, and the frantic urgency of the first half of the year finally drifts away. For most, it feels like a collective exhale. A time to pause, to coast. But this quiet is deceptive. It is not an absence of

It’s impossible to escape the noise around Artificial Intelligence. It’s positioned as the answer to everything from operational efficiency to market disruption. We see the familiar playbook being rolled out by the large consultancies, presenting AI as a universal solution that can be bought and plugged in, instantly transforming any business into a futuristic leader.

(But saying it doesn’t mean they know how to do it) You can always tell when a message is starting to land. Not because it’s declared boldly, but because it begins to slip quietly into the language. Not loudly, of course, just quietly buried in their latest research. A recent McKinsey study asked CFOs what

Most Businesses Would Rather Lose a Million Pound Quietly Than Spend Fifty Grand Loudly I came across a short video from Rory Sutherland recently that hit a nerve. One of those deceptively simple stories that exposes something deeper. He was driving past a Shell garage on the A40. From the road, it looked completely shut.

“So what is it you actually do?” A fair question.Especially when you don’t fit neatly into the usual boxes. Not consultancy.Not recruitment.Not interim. And yet — we’re often called in after one of those hasn’t delivered. Because when the board doesn’t want another presentation…When the new system still isn’t working and no one can say