Insights: Leadership Articles

Why will customers pay more for one product but reject another on price? The Magic 20 Rule explores perceived value pricing, price premiums and the point where greater value can produce diminishing returns in willingness to pay.

AI adoption, hours saved and productivity gains don't necessarily prove financial return. This guide explains how CEOs can measure AI ROI by connecting investment to operational change and measurable improvements in revenue, margin, cost, cash and capability.

AI can strengthen leadership decision-making, but some decisions should never be fully delegated. Explore five areas where human judgement remains essential and how the PRISM Framework can help leaders use AI without surrendering accountability.

A practical five-stage framework for connecting AI investment with operational improvement, financial conversion and measurable EBITDA impact.

Businesses are measuring AI licences, usage and adoption rates, but these numbers don't tell us whether performance is improving. The real measure of AI success is its impact on revenue, margin, cost, cash and capability.

AI doesn't improve EBITDA simply because it saves time. This guide explains how businesses can connect AI initiatives to revenue growth, gross margin, operating costs and measurable financial performance.

Small businesses don't need expensive AI strategies or consultants to get started. This practical guide explains how to identify the right opportunities, experiment with AI and turn successful ideas into measurable business improvements.

Every year, leadership teams spend weeks building strategy. They analyse markets, debate priorities, produce forecasts and agree ambitious objectives. The final pack looks credible. The board signs it off. The organisation moves into execution believing it has a clear plan. Then, twelve months later, the tone changes. Revenue has stalled. Margins are tighter. Projects are behind. The improvements have not landed. Someone asks the inevitable question: Why is our strategy not w

Not all decision-making frameworks solve the same problem. This guide compares the world's leading models, including SWOT, OODA, Cynefin, Six Thinking Hats and PRISM, helping leaders choose the right framework for better executive judgement.

Even the most experienced leaders make poor decisions. This article explores why intelligence and data are not enough, and how better executive judgement, supported by the PRISM Framework, leads to stronger commercial decisions.

Commercial leadership is not defined by the number of decisions you make. It is defined by the quality of the decisions that remain standing long after the meeting has ended. Walk into almost any boardroom and you'll find intelligent people with impressive CVs, years of experience and access to more data than ever before. Financial reports are more detailed, dashboards update in real time, artificial intelligence can summarise vast amounts of information in seconds, and yet o

Download Full White Paper Here Executive Summary Every organisation is one strategic choice away from changing its future. Some choices create growth, resilience and advantage. Others quietly erode years of progress. The difference is rarely intelligence, effort or ambition. More often, it is judgement. Today’s senior leaders operate in an environment of data abundance, compressed timeframes, fragmented attention and rising stakeholder scrutiny. The challenge is no longer acc

The Milk Bottle Principle When I was writing What They Didn't Teach You: Difficult Conversations, I wanted every chapter to leave readers with one practical idea they would remember long after they'd finished the book. Leadership is full of models and theories, but I've always believed that the simplest ideas are often the most useful. One of those ideas has become one of my favourites because it explains, in the simplest possible way, why so many workplace relationships dete

Every year, leadership teams gather to agree the growth plan. Targets are set. Slides are produced. Optimism is projected. On paper, everything looks ambitious. In reality, most growth plans are designed to minimise personal risk rather than maximise competitive advantage. That is not cynicism. It is organisational gravity. The hidden incentive behind most growth plans Growth plans often optimise for: Plausibility Internal consensus Defensibility Short-term deliverability The

Traditional businesses don’t lack capability. They lack room to manoeuvre. Builders’ merchants, tool hire companies, steel stockists and construction material suppliers often sit on strong market positions built over decades. They know their customers, understand logistics, and execute reliably. Yet adding value to traditional business models without competing on price is hard. When products are similar and customers can compare prices easily, competition inevitably drifts to

Improving EBITDA Through Sales Effectiveness, Alignment and Customer Journey When leaders talk about improving EBITDA, the conversation often starts in the wrong place. It starts with: cost programmes, procurement savings, restructures, system projects. Those can help - but they treat EBITDA as an accounting problem rather than a commercial one. In most businesses the fastest route to better EBITDA sits further upstream, in three connected areas: how well we sell, how well we

The B2B trade businesses world has changed. Pricing is transparent. Margins are visible. Customers compare instantly. Online players operate with lower overheads and lower margin expectations. And it does not stop there. The lines between retail and trade are blurring. Retailers are moving into trade supply. Trade distributors are selling direct to end users. Manufacturers are experimenting with direct channels. Customer expectations have shifted permanently. The question is

Every year the same ritual plays out. Leadership teams disappear into meeting rooms, emerge weeks later with a thick document called “The Growth Plan,” and present it with great confidence. Scratch the surface and you’ll usually find something far less exciting: a budget with adjectives. A spreadsheet that has been reverse-engineered into a strategy rather than a strategy that shaped a spreadsheet. Budgets explain the past. Growth plans should change the future. Budgets are i

I’ve been thinking a lot about how organisations are trying to adopt AI. What I’ve noticed isn’t resistance - it’s uncertainty. Most leaders and teams genuinely want to use it well, but they don’t know where to begin without creating risk, confusion, or another half-finished initiative. And that’s the mistake we keep making. We treat AI like software to be installed, when in reality it’s a skill to be learned. Start With People, Not Platforms I’ve watched brilliant, capable e

Most Companies Don’t Innovate. They Optimise. For a long time, I thought innovation strategy meant making things better. Faster. More powerful. More features. More settings. More buttons. That’s what we usually call innovation - but it isn’t. It’s optimisation. True innovation is something very different, and much rarer. The Comfortable Lie of “Slightly Better” Look around and you’ll see it everywhere. Cars with more horsepower, more screens, more driving modes. Phones with b