Ideas to help good organisations turnpurpose into practice

Every board has a version of this moment: someone raises a concern about a senior leader, the room nods, a few people say "yes, we should keep an eye on that" ... and nothing is written down. It felt obvious. Everyone in the room understood it. Surely that's enough. It no longer is. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 came fully into force at the end of June, and its corporate liability provision quietly rewrites the risk calculus for every board in the country. From now on, if a

It may begin with identifying the need for a robust strategy, but the plan that makes it real is one of the differences between organisations that talk about strategy and those that are built on one. I'm currently working with an organisation on its three-year strategic plan. Alongside it, we're building the operational plan that sits underneath it. Some boards would see the second document as a formality. A translation exercise. Something the executive team can tidy up once

It began as a safeguarding idea, but professional curiosity is also a leadership skill, a governance skill and one of the quiet differences between organisations that appear sound and those that genuinely protect their people and purpose. During my recent routine safeguarding training update, one phrase stayed with me long after the session had ended: professional curiosity. In safeguarding, professional curiosity is a vital discipline. It means not accepting everything we ar

Why boards and leadership teams need to treat AI adoption as an operational dependency risk, not just a productivity opportunity.

A board that does not trust its executive team will quickly drift into suspicion, duplication and operational interference.

Organisations need to identify the hardest strategic challenge before building the operating model.