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How often have you come across a terrible piece of technology and wondered how it ever made it past the drawing board?  Buttons in weird places. Features you’ll never use. Options you need but can’t find. You wonder: who signed this off, and did they ever use it themselves? One thing is for sure – they would’ve benefited from reading product management guru Marty Cagan's influential book Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love. It focuses on “product teams” – the

Back in the days of cavemen, motivation was as primal as it gets: eat, drink, mate – and try not to get trampled by a woolly mammoth. Jump ahead to the Industrial Revolution, and things changed. Work became more structured, more repetitive, and more hierarchical. A new kind of motivation emerged – external incentives built on the logic of reward and punishment. Or, as it’s more commonly known, “the carrot and the stick.” This extrinsic model still dominates the workplace toda

If you ever land a job interview with Peter Thiel – the tech entrepreneur and billionaire investor behind some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names – brace yourself for one big question:   What important truth do very few people agree with you on?   It’s a tricky question, no doubt, but it offers an intriguing insight into what Thiel values, as he explains in his 2014 bestseller Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future:   This question sounds easy […] actually,

Innovation can be a high-stakes tightrope walk. Successful companies must continually refine and enhance their existing products to stay ahead – this is called sustaining innovation . But sometimes, a new and unexpected disruptive innovation will   sneak in and rewrite the rules entirely. When this happens, even industry leaders can fall down.  It’s a pattern we see play out time and again. Kodak, once the world’s leading photography company, failed to keep pace with the adve

I’ve read countless books on leadership and management. Many are packed with valuable insights, but few prepare you for those brutally tough times. Sure, models and targets help, but a polished strategy document isn’t going to waltz into HR and handle a hard conversation for you. “I know you’re worried about paying rent, Geoff, but have you seen my elegant SMART targets?” This is why I was excited to find a book that dives into the real tough truths of leadership – even if r

Ever feel like your to-do list has taken on a life of its own – a well-intentioned effort at organisation that ends up adding more stress than relief? You’re not alone. Whether you’re running a business, leading a team, or simply trying to manage the family calendar, staying on track can feel like walking a tightrope while juggling eels. Slippery little suckers!   Now imagine writing that to-do list for a company as big as Google... As Philip Aldrick shared in The Times : The

If you ever need clear evidence of a business's success, look for when its brand name becomes so ingrained in everyday language that it replaces a verb. Not convinced? You can Google it. It’s one of the reasons why many were perplexed by Twitter’s rebranding – millions of us “tweeted” daily, but when was the last time you “Xd”?   This puts Netflix in a rather unique linguistic and cultural, er, position, thanks to the phrase “ Netflix and Chill ” entering the lexicon as far b

If you’re hoping for a play-by-play of Sir Alex Ferguson’s tenure at Manchester United, you’ve come to the wrong place. The term “red teaming” has nothing to do with football.    Instead, I’m talking about Bryce Hoffman’s 2017 book: Red Teaming: Transform Your Business by Thinking Like the Enemy , described as: "A revolutionary new way to make critical and contrarian thinking part of the planning process of any organisation, allowing companies to stress-test their strategies,

I don’t know about you, but I can't hear The Rolling Stones' Start Me Up without picturing Bill Gates and his Microsoft pals throwing some shapes at the Windows '95 launch. Aside from the second-hand embarrassment it gives me, it also goes some way to explaining why I hear strains of Keith Richards’ legendary guitar riff whenever the word “startup” is uttered.   In his 2011 book The Lean Startup , author Eric Ries defines a startup as: “any human institution designed to cre

Ken Kocienda, a veteran Apple software engineer and designer, played a crucial role in developing the Safari web browser, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. In his 2018 book, Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Job s, he offers an unparalleled insider’s perspective on Apple’s creative processes during this amazing era of breakthrough products. The phrase “creative selection” is Kocienda’s spin on “natural selection,” emphasising how Ap

Rarely does a day go by in recent times without the words "Elon Musk" popping up on our newsfeeds. And, for better or worse, his influence on our lives is unmistakable: Teslas are commonplace, Twitter is now known as "X" and half of all active satellites in orbit right now are from the SpaceX stable. But amongst the controversy surrounding him, there remains a fascinating tale about someone who was prepared to challenge conventional wisdom and refuse to take "no" for an answ

When you think about the word "failure," what comes to mind? Embarrassment? Shame? Catastrophe? It’s unlikely the term conjures up any positive connotations.   And yet, Matthew Syed’s 2015 book Black Box Thinking asks us to consider failure as a starting point for making things better.   Black box thinking is a mindset named after the black box recorder fitted to every aircraft. Just as the black box in an aeroplane is there to be salvaged after a crash – to review flight da

If you’ve only heard of Adam Grant from his excellent WorkLife podcast and thought his talents end there, think again… Not only is Grant a successful organisational psychologist and TED talk extraordinaire, he’s also a New York Times bestselling author boasting a back catalogue that’s been translated into 35 languages. His books include Option B (with Sheryl Sandberg), Give and Take , Originals , and Think Again . Or to give its full title Think Again: The Power of Knowing

Netflix sent out its last red envelope in September 2023, marking an end to 25 years of mailing DVDs. Like me, you’re probably surprised to hear this side of the business still existed. Nowadays, Netflix is synonymous with modern-day entertainment as one of the world’s leading streaming platforms. You only reach such heady heights with a culture designed for success. And in the book, No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention , Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and

When things go wrong, humans love to find someone to blame. It often seems to make sense, because it feels both fair and effective — people who screw up get punished and everyone learns not to make the same mistake again. But what if we’ve been getting this all wrong? Pointing the finger of blame might feel satisfying, but it can stop us from learning. And when you consider that we all make mistakes, that’s a lot of valuable learning we could be missing out on. Fortunately, t

The climate. You probably know a thing or two about where it's heading (somewhere bad), but you're not entirely sure how to improve it. After all, you're just one person. Do actions like recycling and using smart energy meters make that much difference? Is there a right and a wrong way to improve the environment? These questions and more are the focus of How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, written by the one and only Bill Gat

As company mantras go, Amazon’s "always day one" is a thinker. Does it infer progress is slow? That you’ll perpetually feel out of your depth? Perhaps a Groundhog Day of sorts, drowning in a sea of acronyms like ACS, ASIN and HOTW… On the contrary, those three words are considered to be inspirational. It’s the reason you’ll find "still day one" and the like on the LinkedIn posts of Amazonians celebrating their five, 10 and 15-year work anniversaries. It’s not a meaningless mo

If you were listing the innovators who had the biggest influence on the world in the past 50 years, the name Steve Jobs would likely come close to the top. You might be tapping out this list on the Notes app of your iPhone, or dictating it to Siri through your Apple Watch. Even if you don’t have a house full of products with a shiny fruit-based logo, Jobs’ impact transforming how we use computers and consume music, news and film in the 21st century is undeniable. 11 years on

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s been a lot of talk of folk leaving their jobs in record numbers. Professor Anthony Klotz from Texas A&M University dubbed this "The Great Resignation." It sounds dramatic – but did it actually happen? My explainer video below explores this question in greater depth... I’m fascinated by what the future of work might look like (something we also considered in the iluli explainer on Universal Basic Income ). The pandemic has accelera

Picture a successful leader at the helm of a great company. What are the qualities that define them? You might now be thinking of a larger-than-life extrovert – someone who thrives on attention, has the charisma to command a room and likes to make a big noise. And it’s certainly true that some of the world’s most famous entrepreneurs are a good fit for this description. But what if I was to tell you that leading a company to greatness required the opposite qualities to this?