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Charlie Munger was a complexity thinker

I’ve read a lot about Charlie and his work. Peter Bevelin’s book Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger is in my top ten. I’ve a signed copy of his Almanack (I figured he’d respect me for that, as I suspect it will make a good financial as well as phenomenal personal investment). His reading list has strongly influenced my own. I’ve written articles that explore his wisdom and mental models. Charlie Munger has had a big influence on me. But despite everything that I’ve learnt, it wasn’t until Cedric Chin emailed me with a speech by him from 2003 –
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Books, 
Complexity Thinking, 
Decision Making, 
Leadership, 
29.11.23
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A Complete Guide to CEO Coaching

It is indeed lonely at the top. The opportunities are huge but so are the responsibilities. Which is where CEO coaching comes in, because even the most seasoned leaders benefit from a trusted thought partner. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about executive coaching, tailored specifically for CEOs. Every famous athlete, every famous performer has somebody who’s a coach. They can give them perspective. The one thing people are never good at is seeing themselves as others see them. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google More about me: I spent the first half of my
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Decision Making, 
Executive Coaching, 
Leadership, 
03.11.22
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8 Time Management Techniques for CEOs

Time management is one of the most common themes in my coaching conversations with CEOs and other leaders. There’s just not enough time in their calendar to get everything done. It’s a challenge for any leader but it’s particularly acute for executives in the high-growth businesses that I work with, as they realise that they can’t scale themselves at the same rate as their business.  Born out of real coaching experience with CEOs and other C-Suite executives, here’s 8 proven time management techniques that will help you manage and leverage your time better. Experimenting with these time management techniques will,
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Complexity Thinking, 
Decision Making, 
Entrepreneurship, 
Executive Coaching, 
High Performing Teams, 
Leadership, 
15.09.22
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A Deliberately Developmental Experiment

When the founders at Future Arc approached me to develop a business-wide coaching programme, they were clear they wanted to do something different. It felt right that a disruptive company that puts talent development at the heart of its organisation should embrace a new approach to developing its people. Fascinated by how we can build organisations and develop individuals for the future, and already drawing on Robert Kegan and colleagues’ work on adult development in my coaching practice, I introduced them to the concept of the Deliberately Developmental Organization (DDO). A DDO is organized around the deceptively simple but radical
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Complexity Thinking, 
Entrepreneurship, 
Executive Coaching, 
High Performing Teams, 
Leadership, 
Mentoring, 
01.04.22
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Cynefin: a decision making framework for leaders

There’s no shortage of “how to” advice, playbooks, formulas and even secrets and guarantees for business success (at least that’s what the gurus will have you believe). This can work well in complicated situations. But high-growth technology businesses are not complicated, they’re complex. That requires a different approach to growing and leading a business, explored here through the lens of the Cynefin framework.
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Complexity Thinking, 
Decision Making, 
Entrepreneurship, 
Executive Coaching, 
Leadership, 
09.03.21
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Learning to think for yourself

Advice is everywhere, everyone has an opinion. It’s what to do with it that’s hard. If you want want to be your best self, then need to stop listening to what everyone else tells you and learn to think for yourself. Let’s explore what that means, including the problem with “how to” advice and the benefits of becoming an independent thinker in a complex world.
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Decision Making, 
Entrepreneurship, 
Executive Coaching, 
Leadership, 
Mentoring, 
21.01.21
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Beware the Illusion of Certainty

We like to think that our lives are ordered, predictable and subject to a great deal of control. The past is finite; we see only one outcome. We attach causality and narrative to it so that it makes sense. We roll our ability to make sense of the past over into the future, which is infinite; there are many outcomes, as yet unknown and unknowable. Randomness, chance, and luck influence us far more than we realize. Certainty is an illusion. Uncertainty is everywhere.
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Books, 
Complexity Thinking, 
Decision Making, 
16.08.20
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How can leadership team coaching help your technology business scale?

In his 2017 TED Talk Want to get great at something? Get a coach, Atul Gawande tells the story of the Harvard and Yale American-rules football teams: “In 1875 Harvard and Yale played their first game. Yale hired a coach Harvard did not. The results, over the next three decades Harvard won just four times. Harvard hired a coach”. Every high performing sports team has a coach, why doesn’t every leadership team?
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Decision Making, 
Entrepreneurship, 
Executive Coaching, 
Leadership, 
23.05.20
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How Women Rise: Break the 12 Habits Holding You Back – Summary

How Women Rise: Break the 12 Habits Holding You Back identifies 12 habits that commonly hold women leaders back as they endeavour to rise to the top of their chosen career. It concludes with a practical section on how to put habit changes into action. This article provides a summary of the 12 habits that the book’s authors, Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith, identify and adds some powerful questions you can ask yourself to unpack your own habits and unleash your full leadership potential.
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Books, 
Executive Coaching, 
Leadership, 
Mentoring, 
18.04.20
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Every entrepreneur needs a coach, mentor & therapist

Like any high-performing individual, leaders need to wrap a professional support team around them if they are to give themselves the best chance of success. That team must be trustworthy, objective, and acting always in the leader’s best interests. This post unpacks the difference between a coach, mentor and therapist and explains why, together, they can make up a such a cohesive support team.
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Books, 
Entrepreneurship, 
Executive Coaching, 
Leadership, 
Mentoring, 
05.02.20
Featured image for “Developing a leadership culture in your high growth technology business”

Developing a leadership culture in your high growth technology business

The internet is awash with articles about the importance of developing a positive company culture. Less less commonly discussed is the importance of developing a positive leadership culture. But what is leadership culture, how does it link to your organizational culture, and how can you nurture it to support the rapid growth of your people and business?
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Entrepreneurship, 
Leadership, 
10.09.19
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4 questions to improve your leadership self-awareness

Self-awareness is considered to be one of the most fundamental issues in psychology, from both a developmental and an evolutionary perspective. As an executive coach, helping my clients develop their self-awareness is therefore one of the most important aspects of my job. Here’s four self-reflection questions that I ask clients, and which you can ask yourself too, to improve your leadership self-awareness.
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Executive Coaching, 
Leadership, 
21.06.19
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Trillion Dollar Coach – A Summary

Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Handbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell is a book about a man who coached the CEOs and leaders of some of America’s greatest companies, including Apple and Google. He passed away in 2016, leaving a legacy of growing companies, successful people and an enormous amount of respect. The book is essential reading for any manager or leader operating in a fast-moving, high growth business.
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Books, 
Decision Making, 
Entrepreneurship, 
Executive Coaching, 
Leadership, 
Mentoring, 
30.05.19
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How to avoid being duped by survivorship bias

It’s easy to see, and pay attention to, only successful individuals and businesses, not the failures that fall by the wayside. This phenomenon is called survivorship bias, a cognitive error that occurs when we focus on the people or things that have “survived” a particular process while overlooking those that did not, which leads us to incorrect conclusions about a situation or phenomenon.
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Books, 
Entrepreneurship, 
Leadership, 
10.03.19
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The Lindy Effect: a heuristic to help you choose your next book

In his book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder Nassim Taleb provides a simple heuristic, known as the Lindy Effect. The effect simply says: that the expected life of an item is proportional to its past life. You can use this heuristic to help you choose your next book based on the wisdom it might contain.
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
08.12.18
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12 of the best books about Executive Coaching

Are you a manager or leader who wants to develop your coaching skills? Maybe you’re already a coach who wants to continue to develop personally and professionally? Here’s my list of books about executive coaching that have most influenced me. More about me: I spent ten years at Deloitte Consulting and as a civil servant at HM Treasury. I became an executive coach in 2013. My coaching clients are transitional founders, CEOs & executives in high-growth technology businesses & the investment industry.
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Books, 
Executive Coaching, 
Leadership, 
Mentoring, 
26.09.18
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2 powerful ways to get better at coaching your employees

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier is one of the best books I’ve read for managers and leaders who want to use a coach approach with their employees but don’t have the time or inclination for formal training. It’s short on theory but long on practical tools and techniques that are a shot to the heart of great coaching.
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Books, 
Decision Making, 
Executive Coaching, 
Leadership, 
Mentoring, 
28.04.18
Featured image for “Coaching & Mentoring: what’s the difference?”

Coaching & Mentoring: what’s the difference?

The words coaching and mentoring are often used interchangeably, though there are in fact important differences. In his book Coaching for Performance the late Sir John Whitmore, explains what the difference between coaching and mentoring is. Whitmore is the founder of the coaching movement in the UK. The book is widely considered to be the industry gold standard for performance based coaching.
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Books, 
Executive Coaching, 
Mentoring, 
12.11.17
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The role of luck & randomness in life & business

Howard Marks is one of Wall Street’s wisest investors. He co-Chairs Oaktree Capital Management which has approximately $100 billion in Assets Under Management. He’s also the author of  The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor. A highly successful investor, and multi-billionaire in his own right, Marks is clear that luck and randomness has played a key role.
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
02.10.17
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What’s wrong with The Lean Startup

The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries, was first published in 2011 and has since become the bible for startup entrepreneurs around the world. More recently, the approach outlined in The Lean Startup has received criticism, but is that fair? In this post I argue that it is not, because that is all it is, an approach, albeit a very good one. 
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This entry was posted in 
Advising, 
Books, 
Decision Making, 
Entrepreneurship, 
Leadership, 
15.07.14