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24.03.25

“Playing tennis on Mars”: Why lessons from sport can sideline victory in business

What could Kobe Bryant have taught you about being a better CEO? What can you learn from Bill Belichick about driving your team’s performance? With their shared focus on performance and winning, and because our brains are wired to think in analogies and metaphors, it’s quick and easy to draw comparisons between sport and business leadership. But it can also be lazy and problematic.

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14.02.25

Leadership beyond deliberate practice

For a long time, the gurus and popular science literature have told us that the best way to master anything is by engaging in deliberate practice. Unfortunately, as I explain in The Myth of Deliberate Practice and Mastery, it’s not that straightforward. That’s because whilst deliberate practice works well in ‘kind’ learning environments, like sports, chess and learning a new language, it isn’t particularly effective in the type of ‘wicked’ learning environments that much of business and leadership takes place in. Can deliberate practice help you be better in business and leadership? Yes, but more so in the earlier stages

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23.07.24

The Myth of Deliberate Practice & Mastery

Perhaps the self-improvement literature’s biggest act of mis-selling is telling us that if we want to improve at anything then we need to undertake deliberate practice. According to one guru “regardless of where we choose to apply ourselves, deliberate practice can help us maximize our potential”. It sounds enticing, but it’s incorrect. Deliberate practice won’t necessarily help you achieve mastery regardless of where you choose to apply yourself.

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02.07.24

Forging a Theory of Mental Models & Mastery

Whether you’re a founder, CEO, investor or other professional striving to be the very best at what you do, how can you accelerate your journey towards mastery? As an executive coach, how can I work with someone who already has a solid level of business experience and help them speed up their journey? It turns out the authors of a fascinating book called Accelerated Expertise: Training for High Proficency in a Complex World were asking themselves similar questions and forging their own theory about this, on behalf of the US Department of Defense. The DoD was trying to wrap its

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26.02.24

Charlie Munger was a complexity thinker

I’ve read a lot about Charlie and his work. Peter Bevelin’s book Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger is in my top ten. I’ve a signed copy of his Almanack (I figured he’d respect me for that, as I suspect it will make a good financial as well as phenomenal personal investment). His reading list has strongly influenced my own. I’ve written articles that explore his wisdom and mental models. Charlie Munger has had a big influence on me. But despite everything that I’ve learnt, it wasn’t until Cedric Chin emailed me with a speech by him from 2003 –

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29.11.23

The Mental Models Paradox

Ever since word of Charlie Munger’s worldly wisdom built upon a latticework of mental models got out, people have become obsessed with what mental models they can use to make them smarter. If we take these mental models and run our reality through them, then we’ll become better thinkers, make better decisions (and investments), and achieve Munger-level wisdom (and wealth). Or will we? Here’s the paradox: Good mental models, and other conceptual frameworks, make us smarter but only up to a point, after which they can actually constrain our thinking.

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19.10.23

The Duck-Rabbit & the Polarities of Leadership

A polarity is a paradoxical situation in which two interdependent and seemingly contradictory states must be maintained for success over time. In business, leadership and life, we find ourselves presented by polarities all the time, often without even realising. As leaders, we’re told that we must be great problem solvers. That’s true, but a polarity is not the same thing as a problem, for which a definitive solution can be reached at a given point in time. That’s why the ability to recognise when we are facing a polarity – otherwise known as a paradox, duality, dichotomy, tension, or wicked problem

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22.03.23

A Complete Guide to CEO Coaching

It is indeed lonely at the top. The opportunities are huge but so are the responsibilities. Which is where CEO coaching comes in, because even the most seasoned leaders benefit from a trusted thought partner. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about executive coaching, tailored specifically for CEOs. Every famous athlete, every famous performer has somebody who’s a coach. They can give them perspective. The one thing people are never good at is seeing themselves as others see them. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google More about me: I spent the first half of my

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03.11.22

8 Time Management Techniques for CEOs

Time management is one of the most common themes in my coaching conversations with CEOs and other leaders. There’s just not enough time in their calendar to get everything done. It’s a challenge for any leader but it’s particularly acute for executives in the high-growth businesses that I work with, as they realise that they can’t scale themselves at the same rate as their business. Born out of real coaching experience with CEOs and other C-Suite executives, here’s 8 proven time management techniques that will help you manage and leverage your time better. Experimenting with these time management techniques will,

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15.09.22

A Deliberately Developmental Experiment

When the founders at Future Arc approached me to develop a business-wide coaching programme, they were clear they wanted to do something different. It felt right that a disruptive company that puts talent development at the heart of its organisation should embrace a new approach to developing its people. Fascinated by how we can build organisations and develop individuals for the future, and already drawing on Robert Kegan and colleagues’ work on adult development in my coaching practice, I introduced them to the concept of the Deliberately Developmental Organization (DDO). A DDO is organized around the deceptively simple but radical

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01.04.22

Cynefin: a decision making framework for leaders

There’s no shortage of “how to” advice, playbooks, formulas and even secrets and guarantees for business success (at least that’s what the gurus will have you believe). This can work well in complicated situations. But high-growth technology businesses are not complicated, they’re complex. That requires a different approach to growing and leading a business, explored here through the lens of the Cynefin framework.

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09.03.21

Learning to think for yourself

Advice is everywhere, everyone has an opinion. It’s what to do with it that’s hard. If you want want to be your best self, then need to stop listening to what everyone else tells you and learn to think for yourself. Let’s explore what that means, including the problem with “how to” advice and the benefits of becoming an independent thinker in a complex world.

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21.01.21

Beware the Illusion of Certainty

We like to think that our lives are ordered, predictable and subject to a great deal of control. The past is finite; we see only one outcome. We attach causality and narrative to it so that it makes sense. We roll our ability to make sense of the past over into the future, which is infinite; there are many outcomes, as yet unknown and unknowable. Randomness, chance, and luck influence us far more than we realize. Certainty is an illusion. Uncertainty is everywhere.

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16.08.20

How can leadership team coaching help your technology business scale?

In his 2017 TED Talk Want to get great at something? Get a coach, Atul Gawande tells the story of the Harvard and Yale American-rules football teams: “In 1875 Harvard and Yale played their first game. Yale hired a coach Harvard did not. The results, over the next three decades Harvard won just four times. Harvard hired a coach”. Every high performing sports team has a coach, why doesn’t every leadership team?

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23.05.20

How Women Rise: Break the 12 Habits Holding You Back – Summary

How Women Rise: Break the 12 Habits Holding You Back identifies 12 habits that commonly hold women leaders back as they endeavour to rise to the top of their chosen career. It concludes with a practical section on how to put habit changes into action. This article provides a summary of the 12 habits that the book’s authors, Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith, identify and adds some powerful questions you can ask yourself to unpack your own habits and unleash your full leadership potential.

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18.04.20

Every entrepreneur needs a coach, mentor & therapist

Like any high-performing individual, leaders need to wrap a professional support team around them if they are to give themselves the best chance of success. That team must be trustworthy, objective, and acting always in the leader’s best interests. This post unpacks the difference between a coach, mentor and therapist and explains why, together, they can make up a such a cohesive support team.

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05.02.20

Developing a leadership culture in your high growth technology business

The internet is awash with articles about the importance of developing a positive company culture. Less less commonly discussed is the importance of developing a positive leadership culture. But what is leadership culture, how does it link to your organizational culture, and how can you nurture it to support the rapid growth of your people and business?

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10.09.19

4 questions to improve your leadership self-awareness

Self-awareness is considered to be one of the most fundamental issues in psychology, from both a developmental and an evolutionary perspective. As an executive coach, helping my clients develop their self-awareness is therefore one of the most important aspects of my job. Here’s four self-reflection questions that I ask clients, and which you can ask yourself too, to improve your leadership self-awareness.

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21.06.19

Trillion Dollar Coach – A Summary

Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Handbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell is a book about a man who coached the CEOs and leaders of some of America’s greatest companies, including Apple and Google. He passed away in 2016, leaving a legacy of growing companies, successful people and an enormous amount of respect. The book is essential reading for any manager or leader operating in a fast-moving, high growth business.

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30.05.19

How to avoid being duped by survivorship bias

It’s easy to see, and pay attention to, only successful individuals and businesses, not the failures that fall by the wayside. This phenomenon is called survivorship bias, a cognitive error that occurs when we focus on the people or things that have “survived” a particular process while overlooking those that did not, which leads us to incorrect conclusions about a situation or phenomenon.

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10.03.19

The Lindy Effect: a heuristic to help you choose your next book

In his book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder Nassim Taleb provides a simple heuristic, known as the Lindy Effect. The effect simply says: that the expected life of an item is proportional to its past life. You can use this heuristic to help you choose your next book based on the wisdom it might contain.

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08.12.18

12 of the best books about Executive Coaching

Are you a manager or leader who wants to develop your coaching skills? Maybe you’re already a coach who wants to continue to develop personally and professionally? Here’s my list of books about executive coaching that have most influenced me. More about me: I spent ten years at Deloitte Consulting and as a civil servant at HM Treasury. I became an executive coach in 2013. My coaching clients are transitional founders, CEOs & executives in high-growth technology businesses & the investment industry.

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26.09.18

2 powerful ways to get better at coaching your employees

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier is one of the best books I’ve read for managers and leaders who want to use a coach approach with their employees but don’t have the time or inclination for formal training. It’s short on theory but long on practical tools and techniques that are a shot to the heart of great coaching.

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28.04.18

Ray Dalio identifies the 11 characteristics of visionary leaders

Ray Dalio’s book Principles: Life & Work identifies the author’s organically grown set of principles for building a successful life and business. According to Dalio, principles are fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behaviour that get you what you want. Dalio also details the personal research he conducted into visionary leadership. Through interviews with the likes of Bill Gates, Reed Hastings, Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk, he identified the characteristics of visionary leaders. This post summarises his findings, with a particular focus on ‘shapers’, as Dalio refers to them.

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09.01.18

15 books that will make you wiser

My experience with cancer changed my relationship with reading and books. Needing to understand my illness better, I consumed every medical paper I could get my hands on. This knowledge helped me deal with my illness and make wiser decisions as part of my treatment process. If it could help me navigate my illness, could it help me navigate life in general? I transitioned to books about psychology, and then to books about the world around me. Two years of radiotherapy, chemotherapy and several operations means you have a lot of time on your hands! Here’s my list of the books

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21.12.17

Victor Frankl on finding meaning & happiness

Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl is essential reading for anybody interested in happiness, personal growth, the psychology of suffering and mental health. It chronicles the author’s time as an inmate in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. The early chapters do not make for easy reading but the book opens up into one of the deepest and most eloquent explorations of finding meaning and man’s search for meaning and happiness. Striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man… This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can only be fulfilled by

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25.11.17

Coaching & Mentoring: what’s the difference?

The words coaching and mentoring are often used interchangeably, though there are in fact important differences. In his book Coaching for Performance the late Sir John Whitmore, explains what the difference between coaching and mentoring is. Whitmore is the founder of the coaching movement in the UK. The book is widely considered to be the industry gold standard for performance based coaching.

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