Long-form notes on decision architecture, institutional clarity, and non-predictive intelligence design.
Every organisation has two hierarchies. The first is the one on the chart — the formal lines of reporting, authority, and accountability that the organisation designed and manages and holds itself accountable to. The second is the one that actually determines how decisions get made, how information
There is a piece of conventional wisdom about people and organisations under pressure that deserves more scrutiny than it receives: the idea that people "aren't themselves" when things are hard. That the version of a person who emerges in a crisis is somehow not the real version — that they are dist
The research on new hire failure is consistent enough to be alarming. Depending on the level of the role, between twenty and fifty percent of new hires fail to meet performance expectations within their first eighteen months. The cost of each failure — recruiting, onboarding, lost productivity, team
The board-founder relationship is one of the most consequential and least well-understood relationships in organisational life. It is consequential because it shapes the operating freedom of the person most responsible for the company's direction and the oversight of the people most responsible for
The performance review has been declared broken so many times, by so many credible voices, that the declaration itself has become a feature of organisational life. Studies find that managers find the process demoralising. Employees find it anxiety-producing and inaccurate. The calibration mechanisms
The family business succession problem is not primarily a governance problem, though governance matters. It is not primarily a competence problem, though competence must be assessed. It is an operating nature problem that is entangled with identity, relationship, and legacy in ways that make it uniq
The retention conversation in most organisations happens at the wrong moment. By the time the exit interview is scheduled, or the resignation letter has arrived, or the early signal of disengagement has been flagged, the operating nature decision has already been made. The person is not deciding whe
The feedback arrives in the 360, in the board conversation, in the executive coach's notes, in the management consultant's recommendation: you need to delegate more. The founder who cannot let go. The leader who is the bottleneck of their own organisation. The person whose need for control is preven
Capital allocation is treated, in most institutional contexts, as a predominantly analytical problem. Which opportunities have the best risk-adjusted return profile? Which allocation produces the most efficient deployment of available capital? Which combination of investments produces the desired po
