Have you ever noticed that some people seem to say things with absolute certainty and others less so.

How often do you question what gives them that level of conviction in their ideas? 

Case in point, I was looking for which episode of Peaky Blinders a certain scene was featured in

I raise this in the context of AI. Perhaps you, like I have noticed that whatever question you ask an AI, it gives you an answer with 100% certainty.

The pressure to drive transformation is everywhere. Clarity on how to lead it is in shorter supply.

I think a key reason for this is that the skills needed for transformation are fundamentally different from the skills needed for incremental growth.

The ask to grow by 5 or 10x is very different from 5 or 10%

Transformation by its nature demands you rethink and challenge existing notions.

Over the past twenty five years, I’ve had the privilege of working with some 400 plus organisations who are going through some form of transformation. And yes I actually counted back through all the ones I can remember right back to my consultancy days at KPMG and through the world class teams I currently speak for.

Some were global market leaders, some were challenger brands, some were scale ups, some were stuck.

They covered every sector imaginable. 

“If your goal doesn’t change how people think, it isn’t big enough”

Goal setting is dead easy. Achieving them is the tricky part.

I’ve never been convinced by the logic of traditional thinking like SMART goals. They sound good on paper.

Stable and predictable environments are great for SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound).

That’s definitely not the world we live in now.

Achieving Bold Goals is the practice of overcoming multiple hard challenges in concert with other people.

And bold goals by their very nature involve things which are uncertain, unclear and lacking a defined pathway.

Take the combination of Uncertainty + Other People and conflict is 100% guaranteed.

What is not guaranteed is the resolution of that conflict. That is optional.

Over the past 4 months I’ve done a complete line-by-line rebuild of my keynote talk.

It’s a fair question to ask why. There are two simple answers:

One is that I deeply believe that better never stops and whatever you do, it needs to get better every day.

The other is that often it’s what’s not said that actually has most impact (my good friends Penny and Mark, both on the speaker circuit encouraged me to go deeper with what I share)

Everyone has a story and a set of experiences which has shaped them.

I have happy memories from the living room floor on a Sunday morning surrounded by family. We’d have three different newspapers - typically The Times, The Observer, and a different tabloid each week chosen by whoever had nipped over to the Post Office to get the papers.

The papers would be spread out over the table, sofa, and floor. We’d gravitate to our preferred sections, be that sport, business, travel, current affairs, cartoons, quizzes, the glossy magazine, personal finance, the advice section, and so on.

It was messy. It was noisy.

Getting unstuck.

When something isn’t working, all too often, we just try harder doing the same thing.

We put more strain on the same rope and keep pulling.

We try harder.

Think harder.

Push more energy into the same approach.

Usually, the issue is not due to lack of effort.

The best fix can be a change in perspective. 

Pause + Reflection = Progress

How was 2025 for you?

Have you had time to catch breath yet and to reflect on the year just gone? 

A lot of people I know they were running on empty by the time Christmas arrived and were looking forward to switching off.

Here’s a question I’ve been discussing at home this week “What were your three best decisions of 2025?”

I’ll share mine shortly, but here’s why I think this is such a simple and powerful reflection moment.

Martin Lewis, The UK’s most trusted ‘money man’ has to put out videos disavowing social media ad scams as a fake AI-generated video is arguably found to be more believable than the real Martin Lewis.

If that doesn’t unsettle you, I don’t know what does.

I think the most unsettling part is not the scams or the technology.

It’s a quiet realisation that cues we’ve relied on for years, like a trusted face and a familiar voice are no longer reliable signals of truth.