Each piece examines a widely accepted leadership norm — where it came from, what it actually serves, and what a more rigorous alternative looks like.
There Is No Should in Career Planning
We look at successful careers and assume the sequence was obvious all along. The promotion appears inevitable. The move looks strategic. The risk seems intelligent.
The First Six Weeks Without a Map
The norm worth examining is this: we have built whole systems around the destination and not left enough space for what the journey, and the people we meet along it, have to tell us.
Leaders Think They Know Their People. The Numbers Say Otherwise.
The longer you have led, the more certain you tend to be that you know your organisation. New research across 300,000 people in 20 countries suggests that certainty is one of the least reliable things about seniority.
The Leadership Gap We Created
41% of technology leaders are considered unable to keep pace with change by their own boards. They are calling it a capability gap. When nearly half the C-suite lands in the same place, that is a pattern. Patterns live in systems, not people.
I Chose to Fail
There is a difference between resilience and self-punishment, and a lot of high achievers were taught to treat them as one and the same. Replacing the pursuit of perfection with the pursuit of what is actually possible is not giving up on standards.
Built to Stall
Most cloud strategies are approved before the organisation has decided how it will work. The operating model clarity that determines whether transformation succeeds is not a follow-up conversation — it belongs in the strategy itself.
