The journal
Notes and essays on the things I work on, think about and experience — across life, adventure, consulting and technology.
4 min read
When a programme is in trouble the instinct is to produce a new plan. It is almost always the wrong first move, because the new plan inherits the assumptions that caused the problem.
4 min read
Three children, and the leaving has not happened all at once. One has moved north and built a life of his own. One is close enough that we still get the news while it is news. One is still at home, and growing up faster than I had planned for.
4 min read
Software that recommends fits inside every control an organisation already has. Software that acts on its own authority does not, and it arrived quietly inside products that had already been bought and approved years earlier.
5 min read
The most expensive transformation failures aren't the ones where the strategy was wrong. They're the ones where it was right, and never survived the journey into delivery.
4 min read
Before consulting, before software, before large-scale programmes, and long before I understood what kind of career I wanted, I had a short but powerful chapter in the forces.
4 min read
By the middle of December most large organisations have stopped changing anything. It is a sensible precaution, and it is also the point in the year when the changes that do go through are the least well tested of any.
4 min read
People often assume consultants thrive on pressure — that we’re wired for complexity, comfortable with responsibility, and energised by the challenges that make others run.
4 min read
I’ve never believed in magic formulas. But I do believe in discipline, intention, and the quiet power of doing hard things consistently. My 5AM routine wasn’t something I adopted because it was fashionable.
4 min read
Most technology roadmaps are approved in the autumn and overtaken by the spring, and everyone involved knows it. The problem is not the planning horizon. It is that a plan listing everything has decided nothing, and left the decision to March.
