Don’t build what you can get off the shelf

GenAI and quantum computing feel like they’re pulling us out of an era when computers were reliable. You put in inputs and get consistent, predictable outputs. Now? Not so much. Both tease us with incredible potential but come with a similar problems: they’re unreliable and hard to scale. Quantum computing works on probabilities, not certainties....

I want to share a story I often use when coaching new leaders – a personal anecdote about a lesson I learned the hard way. Back when I was at university, I spent a couple of summers working as a waiter in a restaurant. It was a lovely place – a hotel in Salcombe, Devon, […]

Are GenAI copilots helping us work smarter – or just faster at fixing the wrong problems? Let me introduce you to the concept of “failure demand.” The most widespread adoption of GenAI is copilots – Office365 CoPilot and coding assistants. Most evidences suggests they deliver incremental productivity gains for individuals: write a bit more code,...

Hiring is one of the most impactful decisions for any organisation. The wrong person can badly impact the culture and performance of the organisation, absorb time in performance management and be a significant distraction. Informal recruitment processes are leaving things down to chance. Inefficient processes consume time and risk losing top...

How do Generative AI tools impact software developer productivity and code quality? A recent large-scale study – one of the most empirically robust I’ve seen – tackled this question by analysing 218k+ developers across 880m+ commits (with control groups and everything). The results? A modest but consistent 4% productivity boost without...