Selected essays and reflections on commercial transformation, the work of leadership, sales, the design of scalable commercial systems, and the patterns that connect them. Most pieces were first published as series on LinkedIn.
Find the thread that is most relevant to what you are thinking about.
On the book
Writing connected to The Architecture of Commercial Performance, including the diagnostic questions that sit at the end of each chapter.
Take me to writing on the book →
On commercial systems and transformation
Essays on commercial capability, transformation, system design, and why performance problems often return when the underlying architecture remains unchanged.
Take me to commercial systems and transformation →
On sales
Writing on sales transformation, buyer behaviour, enablement, decision confidence, and why sales should be understood as a commercial system capability.
On leadership
Reflections on leadership as behaviour, practice, environment, judgement, and the daily conditions that shape how people perform.
On self-leadership
Writing on focus, energy, inner narrative, recovery, and the work that precedes the work of leading others.
On negotiation
Writing on principled negotiation, tactical empathy, interests, positions, and the discipline of reaching better agreements under real conditions.
On the book
Diagnostic questions
Each chapter of the book closes with a diagnostic question. Collected here, all thirty-eight work as a single instrument. They are not a checklist or a maturity score – none has a right answer, and none asks for information you do not already have. Each one forces a distinction: between an execution problem and the design problem underneath it.
Read them in order and notice where the answer comes easily, where it does not, and where you find yourself translating the question rather than answering it. The places you translate are the places the system has a design problem worth examining – and where the book will be most useful.
- When the model breaks →
- The evolution mismatch →
- Governing the commercial system →
- When coherence is designed →
- Judgement, authority, and decision rights →
- When leaders leave a vacuum →
- Sales excellence is not enough →
- Accounts, relationships, and time →
- From persuasion to decision support →
- Leadership as a system capability →
- The age of commercial complexity →
- The commercial system as an operating model →
- Placing judgement →
- The coherence principle →
- Placing judgement before people →
- From diagnosis to design →
- Boundaries, trade-offs, and productive constraint →
- When the board wants the playbook →
- Value, progress, and commitment →
- Judgement under uncertainty →
- Operating rhythms that stabilise meaning →
- From strategy to behaviour →
- Demand as interface →
- Framing and the work of understanding →
- Value realisation and exposure →
- Expansion as a commercial motion →
- Architecture before practice →
- How capability actually develops →
- Fit under uncertainty →
- Collective judgement →
- From void to system →
- The build sequence →
- Holding the system as it forms →
- Why sequence comes before certainty →
- When the system can carry intent →
- Articulating intent without collapsing learning →
- From judgement to capability →
- Structure, metrics, and tooling as stabilisation →
On commercial systems and transformation
From performance to capability
Why commercial organisations cannot sustain performance through individual capacity alone, and what it takes to build commercial capability as a structural property of the system rather than a property of the people inside it.
Originally a six-part series on LinkedIn:
- Performance vs capability – Why results alone no longer scale →
- Heroics are not capability – The hidden cost of individual dependency →
- Designing intent at scale →
- Good times mask missing capability →
- Leadership as a daily system, not a role →
- Capability before growth – What organisations must build next →
Why organisations fail at transformation
The structural reasons commercial transformations lose momentum, and why the failure is rarely about strategy or effort. A precursor to the closing argument of The Architecture of Commercial Performance.
Originally a six-part series on LinkedIn:
- The comfort trap – Choosing safety over change →
- Lack of alignment – When functions pull in different directions →
- Silent resistance – Apathy as the real blocker →
- The leadership gap – When managers do not transform themselves →
- The myth of tools – Forgetting that people, not processes, drive change →
- No rhythm of recovery – How burnout kills momentum →
When AI becomes a first-class actor
On what changes when implementation becomes regenerable – the discipline does not disappear, it relocates. Most organisations are introducing AI agents while sitting on specification debt they do not even know they have.
On sales
Sales transformation
Recurring organisational patterns in B2B sales, and why sales is better understood as a commercial capability than as a performance function.
Originally a six-part series on LinkedIn:
- Sales in isolation – No cross-functional alignment →
- Sales enablement – Misunderstood or missing →
- No shared view of “good” – Inconsistency and guesswork →
- Sales process vs. buyer journey – Confused or poorly mapped →
- Overreliance on tools – Coaching and judgement missing →
- Sales – The most business-critical but least transformed function →
The discipline that never professionalised
On why sales remains the only major business discipline without a commonly accepted operating model. A short history of how the discipline evolved at the level of technique, while the system underneath it went largely unexamined.
Churn and stagnation
On the two patterns that recur in B2B sales organisations – people leaving before they become effective, and people staying long after they stop developing. Both point to the same underlying issue: a dependence on individuals rather than a system.
From challenge to confidence
On Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson’s Challenger research, and on how the framing has evolved over a decade – from teaching customers something new to helping them act with confidence in conditions of overload.
Selling, rewritten
On how the role of sales is being rewritten – not around persuasion, but around decision confidence. Buyers redesign their journey faster than sales organisations redesign theirs, and AI accelerates the asymmetry.
On leadership
Leadership
A set of behaviours practised consistently, rather than a trait carried by a few. Reflections on psychological safety, feedback, coaching, goal-setting, and leading through uncertainty – written from inside the experience of leading commercial organisations through change.
Originally a six-part series on LinkedIn:
- What science and experience reveal about great leadership →
- How great leaders create environments where people feel safe to speak up, take risks, and grow →
- Giving feedback that drives growth →
- Coaching vs. commanding – Helping people think for themselves →
- Setting clear goals and following up →
- Leading in uncertainty – Helping others navigate change →
When to leave
On the failure mode no one teaches leaders to recognise – when capability is intact but context has shifted, and the gap between what the organisation needs and what the leader is most inclined to provide has grown too wide to bridge. Leadership as stewardship implies the role is not yours to keep.
When the title is removed
On what leaders lead with when they introduce themselves – and why the answer reveals more about how they understand authority than any biography would. Titles command attention. Purpose sustains it.
What we tolerate becomes the standard
On David Brock’s Is Good Enough Good Enough – a book positioned as being about sales but in fact about leadership. Mediocrity is rarely accidental. It is what systems are designed to tolerate.
Storytelling and shared consciousness
On why narrative remains the strongest available tool for leaders working in complexity – not because data is unimportant, but because data alone does not change behaviour.
On self-leadership
Self-leadership
On focus, attention, inner narrative, and the responsibility to manage one’s own energy and contribution. The work that precedes the work of leading others.
Originally a six-part series on LinkedIn:
- Focus – How to direct attention with intent →
- Energy – How to manage and renew energy in complex environments →
- Inner narrative – Understanding and shaping the story we tell ourselves →
- Positivity – Why constructive framing is not naïve, it is strategic →
- Self-talk – The language of leadership starts within →
- Recovery – Rest, reflection, and resilience as active leadership practices →
On being open to being wrong
On Carol Dweck’s distinction between growth and fixed mindsets – and on the gap between believing in growth and acting on it. Most professionals stop evolving long before they realise they have.
The space between stimulus and response
On Viktor Frankl’s central insight – that even when external freedom is removed, the freedom to choose one’s response remains – and on what that means for how leaders meet circumstances they cannot control.
On negotiation
What negotiation really is
An introduction to two perspectives on negotiation – the principled approach pioneered at Harvard, and the tactical empathy refined in FBI hostage work – and why both are required to negotiate well in real conditions.
Getting to Yes
On Fisher, Ury, and Patton’s principled negotiation – and why win-win is not idealism but discipline. Separating people from the problem, focusing on interests rather than positions, and inventing options for mutual gain.
On Never Split the Difference
On Christopher Voss’s reframing of negotiation as a conversation rather than an argument – and on tactical empathy as the most powerful tool available when stakes are high and emotions are real.