Cutting through the fog of boardroom nonsense.
High energy, and deliberately uncomfortable. I tell audiences the truth about how their organisations actually work — the way nobody has told them before. They leave with a different question in their heads than the one they walked in with.
For CEO, board and leadership audiences.
Forty-five minutes, or ninety with a working session attached. Built for conferences, leadership offsites, board days, investor gatherings and sales kickoffs. Nobody checks their phone.
The Slow Bleed
Why profitable businesses quietly die. The hidden architecture of decline — how companies lose cash, talent and relevance long before anything shows up in the accounts, and why leadership keeps misdiagnosing it.
The CEO Playbook Does Exist
Everyone says you can't know what you'll inherit until you land. Wrong — 90% of it is predictable, and believing otherwise costs a new CEO the first hundred days they don't have.
Cash Conversion Velocity
The one number that cannot be massaged. Why every metric in the board pack is a lagging indicator, and what to measure instead if you want the truth about the business today.
Sales Is the Symptom, Not the Problem
Built for sales kickoffs and revenue leadership. The bleed shows up in sales first and almost never starts there. What that means for how you run, measure and defend a commercial function.
Why 95% of Transformation Fails
It isn't execution. It's misdiagnosis on day one — programmes that optimise the dysfunction instead of removing it. Forty years of evidence, and what to do instead.
AI Won't Fix a Broken Operating Model
Systems encode the model you already have. Automate a flow nobody designed and you get the same breakage, faster and more expensively. What to fix before you spend.
A safe pair of hands on a live stage.
Twelve panels back to back is a normal day. I work with organisers ahead of the event to curate the programme, shape the topics, brief the panellists and write the questions — then deliver the opening address and run the room.
Recent stages have included bank CEOs, the CEO of OKX, ten of the largest UAE families, and representatives of Guggenheim, Oppenheimer, Nestlé, Siemens and the Ray Dalio family office. Nothing on a live stage is new to me, including when it goes wrong.
- Programme curation and topic shaping before the day
- Panellist briefing and question design
- Opening address and through-line across sessions
- Energy management — reading the room, pacing the day
- Calm handling of the technical failure that always happens
Stages: Family Office Summits UAE · GITEX · Global Blockchain Summit · Fintech Abu Dhabi · London Tech Week · Dubai World Trade Centre · Harvard & MIT faculties
Also available for podcasts
Direct, quotable, and comfortable being disagreed with. Best on: why businesses quietly die, what CEOs actually inherit, and why the transformation industry keeps selling the wrong fix.
Enquire →Booking
Based between Cornwall and Dubai. Travels internationally. Bookable direct or through London Speaker Bureau, Speakers Associates, Champions Speakers, Terrific Speakers and GSpeakers.
Bespoke topics welcome — if you tell me what you want the audience to leave thinking differently about, I'll build the talk around that rather than reheating a deck.
| Format | Typical shape |
|---|---|
| Keynote | 45 minutes, plus Q&A |
| Keynote + workshop | Half day with the leadership team |
| Summit chair / MC | Full day or multi-day, with pre-event curation |
| Panel moderation | Single panel or back-to-back programme |
| Board briefing | 90 minutes, closed room |