Easier to double down

After every bad decision, a moment matters more than the decision itself. It’s quiet. It usually arrives as a number on a report, or a look across the table from someone who saw it coming. And in that moment, we get a choice: read the evidence, or defend...

The part we skip

Every month, the same scene plays out. A team works late reconciling accounts, building the variance report, formatting the charts. It arrives polished and accurate. And it ends exactly where it should begin. Where is the “what does this mean?” Where is...

Draw them the picture

There’s a sign at almost every public swimming pool. No running. No diving. No glass. No horseplay. Read it closely, and something becomes obvious. Not one word about how to swim. That sign amuses me more than it should, because I see versions of it in nearly...

The ones nobody considered

Betrayal, I always assumed, required intent. Someone decides to act against you, and does. The Manchester City verdict changed my mind. Guilty on 114 of 115 financial charges. What stayed with me wasn’t the legal detail. It was the stands. The fathers who passed...

Chasing the next song

A handwritten note. That’s how it started. Fifty years ago this week, a 14-year-old drummer named Larry Mullen Jr. pinned “Drummer Seeks Musicians To Form Band” to a noticeboard at Mount Temple in Dublin. Four teenagers turned up in his kitchen. Bono...