Pressure does not remove your choices. It reveals your discipline.
The keynote. Why the say-do gap opens in stormy weather rather than sunny, what it costs, and the five disciplines that hold when everything else is negotiable.
Speaking
Book me to speak.
I speak to conferences, leadership offsites, boards and owner-managed business audiences. Sessions run from a thirty-minute after-dinner talk to a full board day, and every one of them is built round the same uncomfortable question: what do your decisions reveal that your values statement does not?
What an audience gets.
Nothing motivational. No slides full of quotations from people who have never run anything. What they get is a set of decisions, most of them mine, told honestly, with the reasoning shown and the cost named. I do not hold back. That is usually why people ask.
And nobody leaves with theory. Whatever the subject, an audience should walk out with something they can use on Monday morning and a fair idea of what the answer will tell them.
Examples rather than a menu.
Most of my work is built round the room it is going into, so treat these as a starting point. Tell me the audience and what you want them thinking about afterwards, and I will shape it to that.
What your decisions reveal that your values statement does not
The most valuable leadership question is not what we believe. It is what our decisions reveal we truly believe. This talk works through real decisions and what they gave away.
Building it, nearly losing it, and what the heart attack taught me about running a business
Twenty years building it, the sale, and what I found out afterwards about how much of me had been in the job title. The talk people quote back at me, usually the bit about the cabinet maker.
Formats.
Keynote, workshop session, board day, or a conversation on a stage with somebody asking the questions. I will happily run the simulation exercise from the RESOLVE work if you want the room doing something rather than listening. Tell me the audience and what you need them thinking about afterwards, and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person.
Fees.
Keynotes and single sessions from £1,500. Workshop and board days from £3,000. Travel at cost. If the fit is right and the budget is not, tell me anyway. I would rather have the conversation than a polite silence.
Enquire.
Tell me roughly when, roughly who, and what you want them to walk out with. I will come back to you.