Between World War I and World War II saw the development of one of the world’s most formidable fighting forces. It was an army with 4,000 senior commanders. It was the German Wehrmacht. If I was a soldier in the British or Russian Army at that time and…
(Or - why I chose to work here) I'm 4 months into a new job. The culture was a big draw for me. When we talk about our culture we’re talking about a shared way of doing things. Is it is the glue that helps us to collaborate and…
I wasn’t planning on jumping into the lake. Standing on the shore afterwards, I was surprised how warm I felt. It was a cold October day and it was drizzling. My feet were grounded on the stony shore and the icy rush that I had felt only a minute…
In the last year I've been reading and I've come out the other side with a profound change in my understanding of why the human world is how it is, why we do what we do and how we make decisions. We're more connected as a species than we've ever…
At some point in life, you're going to need to negotiate. Whether it's buying a used car, a house, agreeing a salary for a new job, buying (or selling) software or agreeing terms with an investor, negotiation will come your way whether you like it or not. There are a…
Which start up founder gave us this advice? The clear vision is important - then you keep pressing on, or indecision takes place. Of course you have to be prepared to change plans - it's a balance. Be inflexible and drive on into trouble, be a ditherer and get nowhere.…
As a teenager I couldn't quite get my head around business terminology. Words like operations, marketing, supply chain and procurement meant nothing to me. It seemed that business was complicated. My Mum was a Pharmacist and my Dad an Electrical Engineer. I could understand what they did but no-one really…
The practical difference between the two categories, risk and uncertainty, is that in the former the distribution of the outcome in a group of instances is known (either through calculation a priori or from statistics of past experience), while in the case of uncertainty this is not true, the reason…
Think back to what it feels like to start a new job. You have a lot to take in. I've had some fantastic experiences joining new teams. I've also had some poor experiences. The good experiences didn't happen by accident. Someone took care to make sure I had the tools…
This is a blog post I recently wrote for TechCityUK where I am a Scale Coach on their 2016 Upscale programme. "Whenever there is an execution of purpose, there must be an agent" – Adoniram Judson Adoniram Judson was not a Chief Operating Officer of a scale-up. He was…