The essays on this site build a single argument. You can enter anywhere, but the first group lays the foundation for everything that follows.
If you want something immediately actionable before reading further, the Strategy Execution Map takes 90 minutes and will clarify what your organisation is actually working on this quarter.
On strategy
“Strategy work has not made a difference in our company.” I believe you. Here is why.
Most founders who have paid for strategy work say the same thing afterwards: it made no difference. That feeling is not wrong. The reason for it usually is. Read more →
Has anyone told you why you need a strategy?
Everyone says you need a strategy. Almost nobody explains what it is actually for. Here is the answer that conversation rarely produces. Read more →
You can’t outsource strategy, it’s your job
Strategy has been turned into a separate discipline with its own consultants, frameworks, and job titles. That separation is the problem. Strategy is an act of leadership — not a thing apart from it. Read more →
Strategy does not belong in one room
Most strategy fails not because the thinking was wrong, but because the people who needed to execute it were not in the room when the choices were made. That is not an execution problem. Read more →
Strategy is not one and done
Most companies treat strategy as an annual event. They produce a plan, file it, and spend the next twelve months wondering why nobody follows it. The problem is not the plan. Read more →
On ownership
Why saying “take ownership” is not enough
Ownership is the most demanded and least defined thing in most organisations. The instruction sounds clear. The condition it requires is almost never built. Read more →
Your company has a strategy. Use it to lead.
Most managers assume strategy belongs to the people above them. That assumption is costing them — and their careers. Read more →
You presented the strategy. Most of your managers don’t know what to do with it.
You invested in the strategy. You communicated it. And still, the gap between what was decided and what is actually happening keeps showing up. This is not an execution problem. Read more →
The core diagnostic
The fruit looked perfect
The Red Delicious fell from 75% to 12% market share. Growers lost $760M. The apple still looked beautiful while the collapse was already irreversible. The dangerous part is not the collapse. It is the lag in the feedback loop. Read more →
The 30-minute problem
The gap between what a founder believes about their company and what an outside observer can verify in half an hour. Not fraud. Not deception. Something quieter — and more expensive. Read more →
Surface interventions on structural problems
The blog post gets written. The LinkedIn content goes out. The website looks credible. None of it compounds — because the activity is at the wrong level. Surface interventions on structural problems delay the reckoning. They do not prevent it. Read more →
What the investor didn’t say
Investors rarely tell you why they passed. They move to the next meeting. The silence is not politeness — it is pattern recognition. They found a problem early, anticipated more problems later, and their time was worth more than staying in a conversation heading somewhere they already dreaded. Read more →
Returns follow roots
This is not investment philosophy. It is a description of how value actually accumulates — and why optimising the fruit at the expense of the root produces a predictable outcome. The mechanism shows up in peer-reviewed horticultural science and every capital conversation the author has observed. Read more →
The five questions that change what you think the problem is
The first diagnosis is almost always wrong. Not because the person diagnosing is incompetent — because the presenting problem is rarely the actual problem. A five-lens diagnostic used before concluding anything. Read more →
The Stagnation Tax
The most expensive problem in your business has no name on your P&L
Between 10 and 35% of annual revenue disappears from most founder-led companies every year. Not in a single line on the accounts. In the accumulated cost of a structural problem that has never been named. Read more →
The cost nobody has named (part 1/3)
Organisational dysfunction is not a soft problem. It has a calculable annual cost. Most leaders know it exists. Almost none have put a number on it — because naming the cost requires admitting the dysfunction. Read more →
Three places your money is disappearing to (part 2/3)
Lost opportunities. Organisational inefficiencies. Zombie projects. Three buckets, one cost. This essay includes the rough calculation logic — not just the concept. Readers should have something to do with it. Read more →
Zombie projects don’t die on their own (part 3/3)
A project that continues absorbing resources without producing returns that justify its existence is not a failure and not finished. It is consuming. And nobody has the conversation to end it — because ending it requires admitting the original decision was wrong. Read more →
A business you own versus a job you hold
The Stagnation Tax names the cost. This essay names the condition that makes it inevitable. Companies get stuck because the owner becomes the ceiling. When someone new comes in, the company changes so much that stakeholders do not recognise it anymore. The question is whether the founder is building a business that can outlast them — or a job that happens to have staff. Read more →
The escalation problem
The Double Bind
Some problems are structured so that every available response makes the underlying issue worse. Not a bad decision. Not a people problem. A trap. The solution is not better choices but a different architecture. Read more →
The Chief Escalation Officer
The job title says CEO. The job description says bottleneck. When every significant decision travels to one person before it can move, the organisation has a structural problem disguised as a management style. Read more →
Why role clarity is not HR paperwork
When ownership is unclear, decisions do not get made. When decisions do not get made, the default is escalation. The organisational chart is not bureaucracy. It is the load-bearing wall. Read more →
What the Double Bind feels like from the inside
The structural trap does not announce itself. It is felt as a pattern of small costs: act and risk being wrong or wait and risk being seen as incapable, until the rational response is to stop trying. Read more →
Why you can’t see it from the inside
- Why you can’t see it from the inside (coming soon)
- The question underneath the question (coming soon)
- What the difficult questions are for (coming soon)
Vision, language, and communication
- Your vision statement is doing nothing (coming soon)
- The theme nobody is using (coming soon)
- What “everyone is aligned” actually means (coming soon)
- The thing about shared language (coming soon)
The capital conversation
- What due diligence is actually testing (coming soon)
- The diagnostic conversation investors can’t have (coming soon)
- The claim that dissolved in thirty minutes (coming soon)
The personal arguments
- Don’t make a PowerPoint of your strategy (coming soon)
- I failed at this (coming soon)
- Why I didn’t ask for help (coming soon)
- The people who experienced the gap know it (coming soon)
- What the book turned out to be (coming soon)