Thinking out loud.
Short pieces on what I see in the work. AI without the hype. Projects that deliver because the conversations were honest. Change as a practice rather than a programme. The small-business reality the big firms tend to miss. New posts most Mondays and Wednesdays, on LinkedIn. Indexed here so you can find them in one place.
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Your PMO Has the Wrong Boss
Most PMOs report into the CIO. That is structurally wrong. Project delivery did not start in IT, and putting it there narrows the portfolio view, creates a conflict of interest, and signals delivery is a technical concern. The right boss for a PMO is a COO, a Chief of Staff, or the CEO. The reasons why, and what to do if you cannot move it.
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Change is not a project. It's a Practice.
Transformation programmes fail when leaders treat change as a time-boxed project rather than a sustained practice. Real change moves on three layers (operational, behavioural, cultural) at three different speeds, and only sticks when the leadership keeps modelling it long after the steerco stops meeting. Why this matters more now that AI has shortened every competitive cycle.
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AI democratised the How. The Why is now your moat.
Once everyone has access to the same models, technical execution stops being a differentiator. What still differentiates is clarity of purpose, and the discipline to act on it. The data on purpose-driven companies, and what it means for small businesses deciding where to spend their AI budget this year.
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Why Projects Fail. It's Never the Plan. It's the Conversation You Didn't Have.
Projects rarely fail on scope, budget, or technology. They fail on the conversation that nobody had: the risk no-one wanted to name, the dependency no-one chased, the help no-one asked for. A short piece on psychological safety as a delivery mechanic, and how to combine it with accountability rather than treating them as opposites.
Bring the situation, not the brief.
If anything here lands, or anything here misses, the reply box is open. The aim of these notes is not to be right. It is to think out loud about the work, and to test the ideas against the people doing it.