Writing
Articles
A selection of articles on strategy, storytelling, AI and leadership.
Videos
Thought Grenade: Can principles still be your anchor in choppy seas?
Thought Grenade: Can you innovate too early?
Thought Grenade: Centres of Excellence
Thought Grenade: Learning in flow
Thought Grenade: Growth Leadership
Thought Grenade: Fear is the hidden handbrake on progress
Thought Grenade: Unlock ambition in its many forms
Thought Grenade: The power of routine
Thought Grenade: Good enough is good enough
Thought Grenade: Micromanagement
Thought Grenade: The speak test for strategy
Thought Grenade: Reverse mentoring
Thought Grenade: How to deal with a rebellion
Thought Grenade: Voice versus audience
Thought Grenade: Re-framing success
Thought Grenade: Embrace the beginner mindset
Thought Grenade: Story Scaling
Thought Grenade: Belief
Thought Grenade: Melt-ups and melt-downs
Thought Grenade: The mirror and the megaphone
The Peter Principle for Businesses
Thought Grenade: Show your working
Thought Grenade: The Strategy Conductor
Tall Poppy Farming
RAPPED: Complexity is not a flex
Complexity is not a flex
The future of code is chat
47 items
Why every star needs a solar system
Deborah Turness and Michael Gove rightly argued that people follow people. But how do you build a business your stars don't want to leave?
Impact Storytelling and societal impact: compounding for good (6/6)
The last article in my series about combining words and numbers to communicate impact, with the example of the power of a clean floor
Impact Storytelling and risk: The value of not finding out (5/6)
How to calculate the multiple costs of a single failure, and why prevention is almost always better value.
Impact Storytelling and low staff engagement: The cost you’re already paying (4/6)
How to show a CFO what low engagement is already costing them.
Impact Storytelling (3/6): Time is money. But what does the money buy?
When the audience of your Impact Story cares about efficiency, the maths is only half the argument, the other half is what you with the time saved.
Impact Storytelling: Building the revenue case
When the audience for your Impact Story is a finance function, the argument usually comes down to revenue or productivity. And sometimes often both.
Why impact is the big story in town
The first article in a series examining how to bring Impact Storytelling to a range of business scenarios, from revenue uplift to societal benefit
The party, the pacemaker and the prostate - the year I became bionic
One year ago today I became bionic. Here's the story I wasn't sure I'd be around to tell, and why I think you should read it
Vibe coding: a new superpower for business teams
Vibe coding gives leaders a practical way to shift culture, towards curiosity, experimentation, and shared ownership of improvement.Thought Grenade: Can principles still be your anchor in choppy seas?
Thought Grenade: Can you innovate too early?
Thought Grenade: Centres of Excellence
Thought Grenade: Learning in flow
Thought Grenade: Growth Leadership
Thought Grenade: Fear is the hidden handbrake on progress
Thought Grenade: Unlock ambition in its many forms
Thought Grenade: The power of routine
Thought Grenade: Good enough is good enough
Thought Grenade: Micromanagement
Thought Grenade: The speak test for strategy
Thought Grenade: Reverse mentoring
Thought Grenade: How to deal with a rebellion
Thought Grenade: Voice versus audience
Thought Grenade: Re-framing success
Thought Grenade: Embrace the beginner mindset
Thought Grenade: Story Scaling
Thought Grenade: Belief
Thought Grenade: Melt-ups and melt-downs
Thought Grenade: The mirror and the megaphone
The Peter Principle for Businesses
Thought Grenade: Show your working
Thought Grenade: The Strategy Conductor
Tall Poppy Farming
The two types of attention: get this and transform how you communicate *and lead*
The pyramid and the arc - two parallel shapes for good storytelling
Think like a journalist to lead with clarity
Journalistic habits are a powerful set of tools for making sense of messy, complex situations.
The ex-journo's guide to being a press officer
In May 2025, I channeled years of being a TV news producer into being a press officer
AI's trough of disillusionment might not be all AI's fault
Many AI projects aren’t failing because of AI, but for the same reasons technology projects have always struggled.
The story behind the dashboard: the secret to every successful transformation
How often do transformation dashboards land with the people whose behaviour the transformation depends on?
What is a brand story, why you need one, and how to create it
A brand story is the connective tissue between your culture and your commercial ambition.
The internal brand story: source code for culture and strategy
If your brand story only lives in the marketing function, you’re missing its most powerful use.
Write the brand story you want to publish, and set your transformation agenda
When the mirror IS the megaphone, your brand story becomes a source of pride.
What Donald Rumsfeld can teach us about resilience
It turns out a former US Defense Secretary has a neat way of understanding change and building resilience.
Centres of Excellence: Why they matter and how to make them work
I brought my two fellow partners, Lindsey Ulanowsky and Paul Goundry, together to talk centres of excellence.RAPPED: Complexity is not a flex
Complexity is not a flex
The future of code is chat
Levelling up from NPC: the new leadership dividend is influence over authority
Nowadays there's a new way to level up from NPC to playable character, and it's called influence.
