N° 01
Independent Executive Advisor
Helping leaders think clearly about technology, artificial intelligence and digital transformation.
For more than twenty years, I have worked with executives on technology decisions that carry consequences well beyond the technology itself. Commerce platforms, ERP programmes, artificial intelligence, operating models and major investments may begin as technical questions. Before long, they reach much further into the organisation.
I do not sell software or represent vendors. My role is to help boards, founders and investors understand what they are really deciding, challenge the assumptions around it and reach a conclusion they can stand behind long after the meeting has ended.
A short foreword
This site grew out of the work itself. From conversations with leadership teams, from technology decisions that became more complicated the closer we looked, and from a question I kept encountering in different forms: how does an organisation arrive at a good decision when the answer is genuinely unclear?
That is what I write about here. Technology and artificial intelligence are part of that conversation, as are digital commerce, organisational knowledge and the way decisions are shaped before they reach the boardroom. I am interested in what happens around the technology: the assumptions people make, the information they trust and the conditions under which a sensible decision becomes possible.
Some of the work collected here first appeared on Commerce Guru and The Prompt Monk. New essays are now published here first. Commerce Guru continues to focus on digital commerce, while The Prompt Monk remains concerned with artificial intelligence and the changing nature of work.
Latest essay
Just published.
The newest addition to Thinking.
On the desk
Where to start.
If you are new here, these three essays are the best place to begin. Together, they explore three questions that sit behind much of my work: whose judgement we trust, what organisations remember, and when a decision is ready to be made.
The full library →- N° 01Essay18 min read
The Advisor and the Vendor
The decisive distinction in a serious technology decision is not between good and bad advice. It is between advice whose economic value depends on a particular outcome and advice whose value is independent of the outcome itself.
- Leadership
- Executive Decision Making
- Technology Strategy
- N° 02Research Essay20 min read
Knowledge Systems as Executive Infrastructure
The organisations that will benefit most from artificial intelligence are the ones that already treat their institutional knowledge as a first class asset. Model capability is catching up faster than any of us can absorb. Institutional memory is not.
- Knowledge Systems
- Organisation
- Artificial Intelligence
- N° 03Essay18 min read
The Discipline of Waiting One More Meeting
Most failed technology programmes do not originate from decisions made too late. They originate from decisions made too early, under pressure, without the one conversation that would have changed everything.
- Executive Decision Making
- Artificial Intelligence
- Technology Strategy
One thing I have learned
“A difficult technology decision becomes easier to examine when at least one person in the room has no commercial reason to prefer one answer over another.”
Andreas Rieger
Long-form work
Decision Architecture
How Organisations Decide in an Age of Technological Acceleration
I am developing a longer publication around many of the questions that began in the Foundation Essays: how organisations form judgement, preserve what they learn and turn knowledge into action when technology is moving faster than their structures were designed to accommodate.
Publication details →The practice
I work directly with a small number of leadership teams at a time. The situations vary. Sometimes a major technology decision needs an independent review before the organisation commits. Sometimes an ERP, commerce or transformation programme has become harder to untangle from the inside. Artificial intelligence has added another kind of question: where it can create genuine organisational capability and where enthusiasm is running ahead of the organisation.
My role is usually straightforward: understand the situation properly, bring an independent perspective and ask the questions that can be difficult to see when you are already deeply involved in the decision.
See how I work →Start a conversation
If you are weighing a technology decision and would value an independent view, send me a note. A few lines about what you are dealing with are enough to start.