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Win Together, Finish Together: Why Early Cultural Investment Buys You Resilience
When Europe won the Ryder Cup on American soil, it wasn’t just about golf. It was a masterclass in how culture and systems combine to create resilience. Here’s what executives can learn about building fast starts, trust, and buffers that withstand late-stage pressure.

Darren Emery
5 min read


Leadership at Scale: Stop Being the Bottleneck, Start Building Decision-Makers
As your company grows, the leadership model that got you here won’t get you there. Bottlenecked decisions, frustrated teams, and missed opportunities are signs you’re still leading like a start-up. To perform at scale, leaders must stop being heroes and start being hosts - designing systems that empower decision-makers at every level.

Darren Emery
5 min read


Beyond Outputs and Outcomes: The Systems Advantage
Most organisations obsess over outputs, some have shifted to outcomes - but the real competitive edge lies in systems. Nick Saban’s “process” and Sir Dave Brailsford’s “marginal gains” both prove the same point: you don’t win by chasing wins. You win by building the system that makes them inevitable.

Darren Emery
5 min read


Beyond Strategy: The Napoleon Approach
Napoleon never had a Gantt chart, a Jira board, or a weekly steering committee. What he did have was rarer in today’s enterprises: clarity, adaptability, and relentless execution. The same principles that let him outwit armies twice his size are the ones most enterprises ignore - and it’s why strategies stall, portfolios bloat, and empires (or companies) collapse. The lesson? Victory doesn’t belong to the biggest, but to the most focused, adaptable, and disciplined.

Darren Emery
5 min read


Measuring the ROI on AI: A Boardroom Guide for UK Enterprises
Across UK enterprises, 8 in 10 AI projects never scale. The reason isn’t technical. It’s strategic. This guide shows how boards can avoid becoming the next cautionary tale by treating AI as a capital allocation decision.

Darren Emery
5 min read


Mind the Skills Gap: Talent Triage for Faster Delivery
Most IT functions are losing talent faster than they can replace it – but throwing headcount at the problem won’t speed you up. Here’s how to target capability where it matters most, and win the skills battle without burning budget or momentum.

Darren Emery
4 min read


Collaboration vs Cooperation: The Hidden Blocker Slowing Your Teams Down
If you’re leading a senior team right now, don’t mistake tactical harmony for strategic alignment.
True collaboration isn’t comfortable - but it is transformative.

Darren Emery
4 min read


Leading Through Uncertainty with Strategic Agility
When the terrain is uncertain, a detailed plan won’t save you - but clarity of intent might. This article explores how the best execs lead through complexity using strategic agility, intent-based leadership, and a deep understanding of how decisions are made when there are no right answers.

Darren Emery
5 min read


Fixing the Feedback Loops that Actually Drive Performance
Dashboards don’t drive decisions - feedback loops do. If your teams are waiting weeks for reports and months for action, you’re not data-driven… you’re delay-driven. Here’s how to fix the loops that actually move the needle.

Darren Emery
4 min read


Stop Optimising Yesterday: How to Fund the Future Without Burning Today
Most teams aren’t failing to deliver. They’re just delivering the past.
This post reimagines the Three Horizons of Product Delivery - showing you how to balance innovation, scale, and stability before your roadmap becomes a liability.

Darren Emery
5 min read


Strategy is Not a Backlog
In many organisations, strategy has lost its way. It’s been reduced to a budgeting exercise — a list of projects, initiatives, or key priorities vaguely tied to ambition but completely detached from strategic logic. This transformation from intent to task leaves delivery teams overwhelmed and disconnected, working through endless backlogs without a clear sense of purpose.
But strategy isn’t just a shopping list of work to be done. It’s a singular, integrated set of choices.

Darren Emery
7 min read


OKRs for Leadership
Over the past twenty years the corporate world has seen significant change influenced by digital technology which has revolutionised the...

Darren Emery
3 min read


Why Leaders Don’t Care About Culture
I was reading an article the other day from one of the big consultancy firms about organisational culture and why cultural change efforts...

Darren Emery
3 min read


Want Productivity? Build a Culture of Trust
FACT: Higher Trust = Higher Productivity and more engagement. But how do you create a culture of trust in your organisation? ..... I was...

Darren Emery
2 min read


The Paradox of prioritisation:
Does prioritisation Equal Good Strategy? In the dynamic and fast-paced world of business, strategy plays a pivotal role in shaping the...

Darren Emery
3 min read


Social Conformity Leadership and Cultural Change
I recently saw a video on social conformity that caught my eye, a modern take of the classic psychology experiment by Asch (1951). The...

Abbas Dhanani
2 min read


Walking That Fine Line Between Empowerment and Abdication- (In Agile Teams)
“Find the autonomy in your work. Autonomy is key to feeling good about the work you do, no matter what kind of work it is.” – JEAN...
Erica Hartmann
6 min read


What You Measure is What You Get Back -(AGILe teams)
“The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.” – William Blake. In the modern world there are...
Erica Hartmann
4 min read
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