When the music stops

Liverpool used to play heavy metal football. Fast. Relentless. Chaotic in the best possible way. You knew exactly what you were going to get. So did the opposition. That was the point. Eighteen months later, something changed. Some tactics. A few players. But mostly...

Not friends. Colleagues

There is a particular warmth that fills the room when you are among old friends. The ease. The openness. The permission to say the thing you actually mean. It is a rare and precious thing. Which is exactly why you should not mistake it for what happens at work. Your...

Go. Just go

We do our worst thinking at work. Not because we lack intelligence, but because proximity kills perspective. The urgent crowds out the essential. The tactical devours the strategic. We don’t step away to rest. We step away to see. A founder recently returned...

Clear the fog

Nobody chooses to drive blind. Yet every day, leaders hand their teams the keys, point them toward a destination no one has clearly described, and then wonder why people are crashing into each other. Fog isn’t a weather problem. It’s a leadership problem....

No VAR for this

I was watching football recently when VAR was called in. Everyone paused. The referee walked to the monitor, studied every angle, and still came back with a decision that half the stadium disputed. That stayed with me. Because we’ve somehow convinced ourselves...