Learn how
great teams think.

Articles, book notes, and lessons from business and sport.

A few places to start

Amazon’s two-door decisions

Understand Amazon's one-way and two-way door decisions, with examples of reversible and irreversible choices and a template to help your team decide.

25 lessons from sports psychologist Bill Beswick

Learn from one of the UK’s top sports psychologists about the mindset required to achieve high performance in sports and life.

Amazon’s single-threaded leadership

What is a single-threaded owner? Learn how Amazon's leadership model works, with a project example and practical steps for assigning clear ownership.

How Pixar makes the work better

Inside the Braintrust: candid feedback, without taking the decision away from the director.

Decisions & better thinking

8 reads

When to move quickly, what to measure, and how to learn from a mistake.

Amazon’s two-door decisions

Understand Amazon's one-way and two-way door decisions, with examples of reversible and irreversible choices and a template to help your team decide.

The cost of Amazon’s biggest bets

Exploring the costly missteps that shaped Amazon's innovation culture

The mathematics of failure

The formula that changed how I view success and failure.

Better outputs start with better inputs

Stop focusing on revenue, do this instead...

What leaders can learn from hostage negotiators

Explore how understanding emotional undercurrents can enhance decision-making in business. Learn practical strategies from psychologists and hostage negotiators to improve leadership and operational excellence.

Churchill, decisions, and the data you need

The Churchill War Rooms and the power of hand drawn graphs.

What kind of business are you really in?

A simple framework to understand your business and how to grow it.

Use the data you already have

How Amazon's 'Working Backwards' method shapes product development

Leadership & teams

8 reads

Ownership, honest conversations, and ways to make working together work.

Give the project one owner

What is a single-threaded owner? Learn how Amazon's leadership model works, with a project example and practical steps for assigning clear ownership.

Netflix’s approach to honest disagreement

Netflix uses this to make better decisions

The five-word meeting opener

Learn how the mentor of Steve Jobs would run a meeting

A better alternative to PowerPoint

If you have always thought that Powerpointvisn't the best then you are going to love this essay by a Yale professor

Your mood spreads through your team

Discover how a leader's emotional state can spread through an organisation like wildfire, influencing performance at every level.

GitHub’s 100-day leadership challenge

How Nat Friedman's Bold 100-Day Strategy Transformed GitHub and Redefined Leadership.

Amazon’s leadership principles

I challenge you to find a set of better principles than these

Canva: giving away your Legos

Inside Canva: Coaches not managers, giving away your Legos | Cameron Adams (co-founder and CPO)

Strategy & growth

8 reads

Find an advantage, choose where to play, and build something that improves with time.

Build a business that gets better over time

The secret to building businesses that get more valuable over time.

Don’t forget how you’re going to win

A look at NZ vs Australia business strategy and the importance of a competitive mindset.

Five moves that redefined industries

Explore how companies like Path of Exile, Netflix, and others have used counter positioning to disrupt their industries and gain a competitive edge. This article examines five compelling case studies of this strategic approach in action.

What established businesses can steal from startups

Sick of slow progress in your organisation? Discover how startup strategies can reignite speed and innovation in your business.

Keep thinking like it’s day one

If you work in a large organisation, you can achieve a lot, this article will show you how.

What YouTube’s North Star can teach you

1 Simple metric changed the trajectory of Youtube forever. Learn how you can apply the same principles to your business.

How Airbnb found its competitive edge

This article explores how Airbnbs rise to power can be analyzed using the 7 Powers framework. We will delve into the concept of counter positioning and how it helped Airbnb differentiate itself from its competitors.

Why Peter Thiel challenges competition

This lecture is given by Peter Thiel in which he discusses the nature of competition and monopoly in business, particularly in startups and technology companies. Thiel argues that the goal for entrepreneurs should not be to engage in intense competition but rather to aim for monopoly, where the company dominates a particular market.

Customers & products

8 reads

See things through your customer’s eyes. Learn what matters before you scale.

Storyboard your customer’s journey

Airbnb did and it transformed their business, here's how you can do it too

Why the Uber map makes waiting easier

Uber could have bought 1000s of extra taxis, instead it gave you a map.

Do things that don’t scale

From Startups to Enterprises: The Counterintuitive Path to Growth

Understand your business by deleting it

A random thought experiment I made up to help you get clarity

Why customer retention deserves your attention

Exploring why retention is the key metric in today's business landscape and how it drives long-term success.

Start your next idea with a press release

How Amazon's 'Working Backwards' method shapes product development

Find your customer’s AHA moment

Understanding this is critical to growing your product and business

What product–market fit really looks like

The Founder of Twitch talks about what PMF is and I find it to be such a different take on product market fit than you usually hear.

AI & technology

8 reads

Making sense of the technology, and finding useful ways to put it to work.

Good AI strategy, bad AI strategy

And how to tell the difference.

The toothbrush test: where to start with AI

If you struggle to find a starting point for AI, this test will help you get started

Approach AI like a toddler

This unlock has led me to one exciting conclusion: The more I use AI, the more ideas I have.

The case for an internal AI tool

Why large companies without internal AI tools like Meta's Metamate are falling behind in today's tech landscape.

Is AI making us mean?

Be kind to ChatGPT, it will make you a nicer person

Using AI to build connections in a new city

Discover how I leveraged AI to transform networking in London, creating a scalable system for building meaningful professional relationships.

How does ChatGPT work?

Copilot

A glimpse at the future of search

Finally some competition.

Sport & performance

9 reads

Preparation, confidence, and surprising lessons from people who compete.

High performance and goal setting with Eliza McCartney

A practical guide to how Eliza McCartney approaches goal setting and structures her training for high performance.

25 lessons from sports psychologist Bill Beswick

Learn from one of the UK’s top sports psychologists about the mindset required to achieve high performance in sports and life.

The mathematician who won the Olympics

The story of Anna Kiesenhofer's incredible victory in Tokyo

What we can learn from three-pointers

Moneyball for basketball has arrived.

What if you knew how fast your competitors were?

Copilot

How athletes are using AI

A look at how computer vision opens up a new language for athletes to improve their performance.

From a cancer diagnosis to a half marathon

A post that is aimed to inspire you to keep going and to keep pushing through.

Comparing Olympic medal efficiency

In this article we compare the funding money that went into the Olympic programs of Great Britain and New Zealand and the medals they won.

The Formula 1 crisis playbook

How Elite Teams Drive Success Through Unforeseen Challenges

On the bookshelf

8 book notes

Books worth spending time with, and the ideas that stayed with me.

Working Backwards

I've never highlighted so many things in my life

No Rules Rules

Focus

7 Powers

A book on business strategy that outlines the seven most powerful forces that shape the business world and how companies can harness them to achieve success.

The End of Average

A thoughtful book about why average is a bad way to understand people, talent, learning, and potential.

Trillion Dollar Coach

A comprehensive guide to the leadership principles of Bill Campbell, the legendary Silicon Valley coach who mentored some of the most successful tech entrepreneurs.