Insights

Working notes from the practice.

Short, considered pieces on executive readiness, leadership transitions, succession, and holding authority under pressure. Written for leaders preparing before the spotlight, not under it.

Transition

Why capable executives fail in the first ninety days.

By the time a transition fails, the causes are usually months old. The first ninety days are where they surface. A look at why capable leaders come unstuck so early, and what readiness asks of them beforehand.

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The idea

What executive readiness means.

Readiness sounds obvious until you have to put a mark against a name. What it really means, why the usual stand-ins for it mislead, and how you might judge it in a leader before the role does.

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Succession

Preparing a successor before the seat is theirs.

Most succession planning names a person and stops. Preparation is the harder, quieter work that happens in the years before the handover, and it is where continuity is actually won or lost.

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Authority

Holding authority under board pressure.

The boardroom tests a new leader more sharply than anywhere else, because it is the one room that can hand authority over and take it straight back. Where that pressure comes from, and what it takes to hold your ground.

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Transition

The quiet transitions that fail.

Not every failed transition looks like a crisis. Most look like nothing much at all, a capable leader in a good role slowly failing to take hold, until the organisation has quietly moved on without them.

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Start with the Readiness Brief.

A short, considered diagnostic on the conditions that decide whether a leader is ready for the next room. Free, delivered by email.

Read the Brief