AI is making CVs more polished, more tailored and increasingly difficult to distinguish. But the answer isn’t more screening technology. It’s better assessment. As AI becomes a standard part of the application process, leaders need to rethink what a CV can really tell them, ask better questions and focus more on judgement, experience and the human qualities that are much harder to generate.

Leaders are often rewarded for starting things, but rarely for stopping them. Knowing when to walk away from an idea, project, client or strategy can be one of the most valuable decisions you make.

A quarter can look bad simply because you are comparing it with the wrong past. I’ve spent enough time around recruitment, staffing and contingent workforce businesses to know how quickly peaks, troughs and one-off shocks can distort the picture. Good leaders look beyond the headline number, challenge the baseline and ask what the direction of travel really tells them before making the next move.

Growth has a habit of exposing weaknesses that were easy to ignore when a business was smaller. Scaling successfully means changing how the organisation leads, decides and operates.

The umbrella market is facing growing regulation, scrutiny and change. Its future will depend not just on better rules, but on stronger leadership, better decisions and greater accountability.

Culture is shaped less by values statements and more by everyday decisions, behaviours and what leaders are prepared to tolerate. What you allow quickly becomes what your organisation accepts.

When growth stalls, leaders often look at sales, systems or people. Sometimes the real constraint sits much closer to home: the leadership team itself.

A long list of initiatives is not a strategy. Real strategy is about choices, priorities and trade-offs, and being clear about what your business will not do as well as what it will.

Why good businesses make bad decisions when they think too short-term

One of the more surprising lessons I've learned throughout my career is that organisations rarely suffer from a complete lack of awareness. In fact, most leadership teams have a remarkably good understanding of the challenges facing their business. They know where customers are becoming frustrated. They know which processes have become inefficient. They know where communication breaks down, where decision-making slows and where opportunities are being missed. The difficulty i

Every organisation wants growth. Ask a business owner, chief executive or board what they are trying to achieve and growth will almost always feature somewhere near the top of the list. More customers. More revenue. More market share. More impact. Yet despite being one of the most common objectives in business, growth is often approached in surprisingly short-term ways. Quarterly targets dominate conversations. Immediate opportunities demand attention. Performance is measured

When people talk about organisational performance, strategy is often the first thing blamed. Growth has stalled? The strategy must be wrong. Teams feel disconnected? We need a new strategy. Competitors are moving faster? Time for a strategic review. Yet after years spent leading organisations, working with boards and supporting leadership teams, I've become increasingly convinced that most organisations don't have a strategy problem at all. In fact, many already know exactly