Short, honest writing on what is working, what is not, and what we are learning inside real organisations.
The core thesis: most PE portfolios were built for a world of integrated, deterministic software. They are now misaligned with the modular, probabilistic architecture that AI is creating, and the implications for value creation are significant. --- The Foundational Mismatch Most PE portfolio…
Why the winners of the AI era will not be the organisations that picked the best tools. --- On 31 March, Jack Dorsey and Sequoia's Roelof Botha published an essay, From Hierarchy to Intelligence, arguing that corporate hierarchy is an obsolete information routing system. Their claim is that AI can…
In my last newsletter, I shared Career Helper, a Claude skill for job seekers. I mentioned I'd follow up with what I've learned from building 50+ skills. This is that follow-up. I've been building with Claude Code since its launch in February 2025. When Anthropic formalised the skills feature in…
I don't know why, but January is often a forced career transition moment, so it seems now is a good time to subvert the newsletter to talk about this Claude skill. It's a pretty useful demonstration of what you can do with a skill, making use of all sorts of techniques. Next newsletter, I will…
Let us begin with a familiar scene. The annual strategy offsite. A three-year roadmap on the screen. Year one is detailed, year two is vague, year three is aspirational. Everyone nods. The meeting ends. Twelve months later, the same people gather to create another three-year plan that looks…
All of the Major providers have cook books, or prompt writing guides. With the release of chatGPT 5.1 there are a few changes you can make to when you are creating prompts to get better results out of it. I know this looks a little alien, and is a bit more effort. Do I use these approaches all of…
In October 2025, Channel 4 aired a documentary about AI and employment. The presenter, Aisha Gaban, delivered her lines with the slightly stilted cadence you expect from documentary narration. She looked professional. She sounded credible. And at the end of the programme, she revealed something…
And How to Save It Let us begin with a difficult truth. That new pilot you are about to kick off, the one being championed internally as the next major leap in transformation, is more likely to stall than succeed. This will not be because of bad code, immature algorithms or even external market…
Smart, experienced leaders are sitting around polished tables, surrounded by reports that would make a data analyst weep with joy, yet they're more uncertain than I've seen them in years. Why? Because we're navigating something genuinely unprecedented. Five generations working together. Digital…
Customer Profile A well-established financial services firm with a 50-year legacy, over 350 employees, and consistently strong margins. Renowned for its trust, expertise, and people-driven workflows, the firm had long been a leader in its space. But as AI-enabled competitors emerged, pressure…
Introduction: Why Competence Matters More Than Curiosity The growing presence of generative AI tools like ChatGPT in the workplace has sparked a wave of experimentation. Business users are drafting emails, summarising documents, generating product ideas, and even scripting client communications,…
Why Mid-Sized Firms Do Not Need to Lead the AI Race, but Do Need to Catch Up Over the last two years, we have worked closely with dozens of mid-sized organisations to understand how they are responding to the acceleration of artificial intelligence. While headlines focus on disruption and…
We are rushing to a development pattern where multi-agent systems, collections of autonomous yet collaborating AI entities, are becoming increasingly critical to business operations. As organisations race to implement these powerful new tools, the question facing CTOs and engineering leaders is…
In boardrooms across the UK, a familiar conversation is playing out. Someone asks if the business is doing anything with AI. The answers are often vague. A chatbot here. A small experiment there. Perhaps someone in IT is trying out a language model. These early steps might feel like progress, but…
Introduction: The Unstoppable Wave of AI Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic concept; it is already reshaping the core of knowledge-based work. Over the past two years, my team and I have studied, consulted with, and advised more than 100 mid-sized businesses on AI readiness,…
Introduction: A Vision of Future Development The intersection of software development and AI agents presents an area ripe for exploration and innovation. Traditional governance practices, often designed for human-centric workflows, demand reimagining in an era where AI teams can handle operational…