Home · Insights
Insights

Ideas, observations and operating lessons on organisational capability, leadership, execution and what happens when businesses outgrow the way they are run.

For CEOs, MDs, founders and leadership teams building the organisational capability required for what comes next.

Organisational capability
When to Hire a COO: A Stage-by-Stage Guide

When to Hire a COO (And When You're Asking the Wrong Question)

Most founders reach for a COO hire when the real problem is something else entirely. This analysis breaks down the decision by revenue stage, names the failure modes, and gives you a practical test to apply this week.

4 August 2026
Decision Support for Founders at £1M–£10M

The Decision Bottleneck: Why Founders at £1M–£10M Need Structure, Not Software

Four documented failure modes are costing scaling founders velocity right now. This is not a software problem or a mindset problem — it is a structural one, and it has a different shape at every revenue stage.

6 August 2026
Themes we return to

The Capability Gap™ · organisational debt · leadership and CEO dependency · succession · decision rights · execution and coordination · key-person risk · institution building · diligence readiness · the second build.

The canonical statement of the point of view is the ClarityOS Manifesto. To see where your own organisation stands, start with the Capability Gap Assessment™.

Insights by email

One piece a fortnight on what actually constrains an established B2B business.

What I see inside businesses this size: where organisational capability is under pressure, what it costs, and what the fix looks like in practice. No pitch, and you can leave whenever you like.

Your address goes nowhere else, and one click unsubscribes.

From the archive

Earlier pieces on business planning, models, consulting and decision support, kept for readers who arrive looking for them.