Authority does not come off at the front door. That is the part almost nobody plans for. Executives prepare for the scrutiny, the board, the succession politics, the loneliness of the seat. They do not prepare for the fact that the role travels home in the body — that...
The cruellest thing I see in organisations is not a dismissal. It is a dismissal that takes three years. Somewhere in most established companies there is a senior person everybody has quietly stopped relying on. He was there at the beginning. He carried the firm...
The most expensive decisions I see are not made under pressure. They are made by capable people with nothing left worth doing. This runs against everything boards are trained to watch for. Risk committees model stress. Succession plans anticipate collapse. Everyone...
A coach who is still necessary after two years has failed. I say that to every board that hires me, usually in the first conversation, and it is not modesty. It is the design specification. The deliverable of this work is not the sessions; it is the handover. The...
Most executive coaching fails because it starts with tools. A model on a slide, a personality test, a workbook of techniques — addition, addition, addition, stacked on top of a leader who has never once been shown an accurate picture of himself. The industry sells...
