For more than twenty years, I have worked with CEOs, founders, boards and investors on decisions where technology reaches quickly into strategy, organisation and the way a business actually works.
The technologies have changed considerably during that time. The underlying conversations have changed much less. A new platform, an ERP programme, artificial intelligence or a major investment may bring people into the room. Before long, the discussion is about priorities, assumptions, capabilities, risk and what the organisation is really trying to achieve.
How I work
I work independently. There is no software to sell, no vendor relationship to protect and no implementation team waiting for the decision to go in a particular direction.
That freedom matters to me because difficult technology decisions extend far beyond technical questions. The harder questions concern what an organisation needs, what it can realistically absorb, which assumptions deserve challenging and which consequences will still matter several years from now.
My role is to understand the situation well enough to form an independent view, test the reasoning around it and say what I think, including when the conclusion is inconvenient.
I keep the practice deliberately small because I want to remain personally involved in the work. The person in the first conversation is also the person doing the analysis, writing the recommendation and returning for the difficult discussion afterwards. There is no handover to a delivery team once the interesting part begins.
What keeps me interested
After two decades in this field, I have become less interested in whether a technology is impressive in itself. There is usually something impressive to look at.
I am much more interested in what happens when that technology meets a real organisation with history, politics, customers, existing systems, talented people, limited attention and a budget that eventually has to reconcile itself with reality.
That is where technology decisions become interesting. It is also where independent judgement becomes useful.
Writing
Before I began publishing under my own name, much of my writing appeared through two specialist publications.
Commerce Guru grew out of my work in digital commerce, platform strategy and the organisational questions surrounding large technology decisions.
The Prompt Monk began as a place to think more seriously about artificial intelligence, executive judgement and organisational capability.
Both remain as specialist archives. New essays now begin here, as part of a broader body of work around technology, organisations and decision making.
Fields of work
- Digital Commerce
- Technology Strategy
- Artificial Intelligence
- Organisational Transformation
- Executive Decision Making
Working with
- Chief Executives
- Founders
- Executive Boards
- Private Equity
- Supervisory Boards
Principles
- Independent
- Vendor independent
- No affiliate relationships
- No paid endorsements
Long-form work
In development
Decision Architecture
How Organisations Decide in an Age of Technological Acceleration
I am developing a longer publication around executive judgement, organisational memory and the way consequential technology decisions are made under conditions of accelerating change.
More about the project →