Hi Reader There is a type of commercial leader who is, genuinely, impressive with data. Fast, precise, prepared. Pull the numbers up on a Monday morning and they've already read them. Ask them what's happening in the pipeline and they'll tell you - accurately, specifically, with a clear view on what needs to happen next. They are also, in many cases, almost completely unaware of what is happening in the room. Not occasionally. Not under unusual pressure. Routinely. As if it’s a default...
10 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader Tony, the founder, had everything in place. Clean CRM, updated pipeline, reports in on time, every time. Pull the dashboard on a Monday morning and it looked exactly like how a well-run commercial operation should look. What it didn't show was that one of his salespeople had a new baby at home. Tony didn't know. I had to tell him. That's not a small thing, is it? Actually, that's the whole thing. The data was immaculate and yet the team was quietly deciding whether they belonged...
17 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader 3 seconds. That's how long it takes. One question without a clean answer, and the person who was leaning forward, listening, asking good questions is…..gone. What replaces him pushes back in his chair, tips his head to the ceiling, and starts talking at the room. Not to it or with it. The team doesn't react. They look down at whatever is in front of them and wait. They've seen this all before. Why your authenticity cracks under pressure....read on A thirty-year veteran coach said...
24 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader He was standing about five feet away from me, hands on hips, gazing out the window. Using the silence to fill the air with tension. An amateur move, but I'd seen it before, so I let him have his moment. Eventually he broke it. "So what are we going to fucking do?" "Nothing," I said. "We're going to do nothing." That didn’t go down well. What followed was the full inventory…..revisit the strategy…review what the guys are saying on calls…readjust targets ....reforecast ....and, is the...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader He was mid-forties. Three years into a tech company he had built from nothing, with funding that had seemed substantial until it started disappearing the way funding does - not in one dramatic moment but in the slow, ordinary arithmetic of a business that costs more to run than it produces. He was a product guy. Genuinely brilliant at what he had built. And that was part of the problem; he had confused his passion for the product with the ability to sell it, and the two things are...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader She knows this deal inside-out. The customer relationship, the procurement timeline, the competitive risk that surfaced three weeks ago. She has a view on the next move. A clear one. Then she pauses. Not to think. To see what you think. You have been in this conversation a hundred times. This is the first time you have understood what it actually is. Research into scaling organisations shares something founders find specifically uncomfortable when they encounter it directly: teams...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader (3.5-ish minute read..you'll love this edition. Promise.) I was presenting a new sales strategy to a sales team I was working with as a fractional Sales Director. All the usual content; a fresh approach, significant change, resources being allocated etc and, to be fair, considerable work had gone into it. I wrapped up the 15-minute presentation and then asked something that visibly surprised them (maybe it was more shock than surprise actually). "Get into two groups of three. The...
about 2 months ago • 8 min read
March 4, 2026 Hi Reader (3.5-ish minute read..what else would you be doing??) In 1975, Steven Sasson invented the digital camera. He was an engineer at Kodak; THE camera company. His bosses looked at it and said something along the lines of: "That's great…but don't tell anyone about it." Their underpinning assumption was that Kodak's profits would always come from film and printing. Digital photography was interesting but clearly irrelevant to their business model. That assumption felt safe....
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
February 25, 2026 Hi Reader ( 4-minute read..I promise it will be more rewarding than scrolling Insta) I’m sure you’ve been in a meeting where someone made what seemed like an obviously wrong decision? Not wrong because they lacked information but wrong because they completely missed something that felt blindingly obvious to you. Sound familiar? Carelessness likely isn’t a root cause, but Culture probably is. Not culture as in "we value innovation" posters on walls. Culture as in the...
2 months ago • 6 min read