Almost everything I talked about, and did, this year came back to one unfashionable idea. Doing the small things properly still matters. Not the glossy things. Not the strategic slogans....

John Vincent buying Leon back from Asda is being framed as a comeback story. Founder returns. Vision restored. Magic reignited. That framing is comforting. It is also incomplete. Because what...

Your Party is a mess. Now, I met Jeremy Corbyn once, he was lovely, but there’s lessons to be learned from the UK’s newest political party, and politics isn’t important...

Been to McDonald’s recently? It’s expensive, poor quality, and a bad customer experience. But that’s just my opinion. An opinion I am really interested in is that of Robert Reich,...

Paul Heyman is one of the sharpest storytellers in modern entertainment. He can sell a feud, build a star, and turn chaos into theatre. But if you listen to him...

What is Path dependency? There’s a comforting myth about life: that the longer we’ve done something, the better, and more certain it must be. The process exists because it’s proven....

Ferrari has never been short on myth and legend. The scarlet cars, the tifosi, the weight of history. But the last few weeks have exposed something older than any championship...

There’s a point early in every project where the tone is set. It happens quietly, often before any work begins. Someone walks into a meeting, opens their laptop, and begins...

For all the talk about social value, almost no one funds the thinking behind it. Money is poured into projects, volunteering hours, and evidence reports, but not into the planning,...

Ask most charities what “bad social value” looks like, and you’ll get the same answer: the helicopter company. That’s the company that drops in for a day, paints a fence,...

In Harvard Business Review, John Blakey argues that “leadership trust is a measurable, manageable business asset,” and that organisations must start treating it like any other strategic variable. It needs...

The Social Value Trap: How Portals and Calculators Miss the Point Social value is meant to make public spending meaningful. The idea is simple; if you’re working with public money,...