Themes · 8 reading paths

Themes

Eight paths through the essays. Each follows a single argument as it recurs across the years and the domains, oldest first.

The operating machine

Strategy lives or dies in the machinery, not the deck.

  1. 28 Dec 2022The missing operating system behind strategy execution
  2. 14 Feb 2023Lead with governance: the integration lesson most companies learn too late
  3. 3 Apr 2023Global shocks, local insanities: the two ways supply chains fail
  4. 20 Nov 2024You don't shift culture: you swap it in
  5. 18 Dec 2024Frame it, prove it, get out of the way
  6. 30 Apr 2025Delivering value creation
  7. 5 Jul 2026The model and the machine

The judgment premium

When intelligence is cheap, judgment is the bottleneck and the prize.

  1. 4 Jan 2024Augmented, not automated
  2. 23 Jun 2026Education for a world of abundant intelligence
  3. 29 Jun 2026The clerk we fired
  4. 1 Jul 2026The switch behind the screen

Cash is truth

Follow the cash; the dividend is the discipline; valuation orthodoxy launders optimism.

  1. 28 Dec 2022Simple corporate finance rules for strategists
  2. 2 Apr 2023How revenue recognition games inflate bonuses, and how to stop them
  3. 22 Nov 2023When "as-a-service" is just debt in disguise
  4. 17 Jan 2025Convertible notes: the missing muscle in corporate partnerships
  5. 4 Feb 2025The ten rules of corporate finance
  6. 12 Feb 2025The two myths that broke corporate finance
  7. 20 Feb 2025An open letter to new CEOs: leading from the dividend floor

The weight of the wires

The digital is physical: mud, kilowatts, distance.

  1. 19 Jan 2023The internet in the rain
  2. 18 Jan 2024The cloud is a furnace
  3. 11 Jun 2024There are no fibre laggards, just lazy analysis
  4. 10 Mar 2025The forgotten infrastructure of intelligence

Who controls the stack

Infrastructure is contested ground: sovereignty, access, accountability, and the concentration of value.

  1. 25 Jul 2023Open RAN's governance vacuum: why architecture without accountability fails
  2. 6 Jun 2024When your infrastructure became sovereign
  3. 10 Jun 2024The right to click: why making internet access a human right isn't just a noble idea, but a regulatory earthquake
  4. 28 Apr 2025The end of the stack

Read the regime

Markets price narratives and permission; the master skill is knowing which regime you are in.

  1. 30 Apr 2025When vision is owed
  2. 15 Dec 2025Strategy in an age of permission
  3. 15 Dec 2025Equity positioning in an age of permissioned levitation
  4. 4 Mar 2026Private credit dislocation
  5. 21 Apr 2026Consuming the inheritance
  6. 1 Jul 2026The switch behind the screen

Growth begins in the customer

Value is made in demand, not the boardroom; feeling and adoption are the variables no one forecasts.

  1. 26 Jan 2023When the market was wrong and the customer was right
  2. 23 May 2023Customer emotional debt: the strategic risk you're not forecasting
  3. 12 Sep 2023Growth isn't born in the boardroom
  4. 18 Mar 2024The vanity of brands in the land of indifference
  5. 14 May 2025Why beating the market and gross margin expansion rarely go together
  6. 23 Jan 2026Adoption-first design in consumer and enterprise systems

Deciding, not advising

Leadership is hard choices and held nerve, not vision; who is in the room is the strategy.

  1. 15 Dec 2022Ten years a consultant: what I took, what I left
  2. 19 Dec 2022The best training Booz ever paid for
  3. 8 May 2024Give me a CEO with a spine, not a slogan
  4. 22 Aug 2024Leaders don't build pipelines. They carry posses
  5. 8 Oct 2024Inclusion as renewal: throwing open the windows
  6. 23 Apr 2025The leadership myths we hire for