The map runs out. That is where I do my best work.

I work with senior leaders and executives in conditions where authority alone is not enough, where problems are ambiguous, stakeholders pull in competing directions, and clarity emerges through action rather than analysis. For thirty years I have helped leaders navigate exactly these conditions, as a coach, a facilitator, an educator, and someone who has led organisations myself.

I am not a theorist who occasionally visits organisational life. I have carried a P&L, built businesses, stood in front of thousands of leaders in executive education, and sat with individual leaders through some of the most difficult moments of their careers. That breadth is what I bring into every engagement.

Why this work still interests me

Looking back, there is a thread running through almost everything I have done.

I started my working life in outdoor education, where you learn very quickly that the plan and the terrain are rarely quite the same thing. People respond differently when the weather changes, confidence disappears or the route ahead becomes uncertain. You cannot always think your way to the answer from where you are standing. Sometimes you have to move, notice what happens, and adjust.

I have been drawn to versions of that situation ever since.

I found it running businesses, where decisions had consequences for people, customers and the numbers. I found it working across cultures, where assumptions about authority, trust and conflict that seem obvious in one place make little sense in another. I find it in facilitation, when a room full of intelligent people cannot simply be told what the answer is. And I find it repeatedly in coaching senior leaders, particularly when the challenge in front of them does not have a neat solution waiting to be discovered.

That is probably why I still enjoy this work after thirty years. I am interested in what happens when capable people reach the edge of what they already know: how they make sense of complexity, how they work with other people when interests collide, and how they find a useful next move when there is no reliable map to follow.

Four perspectives. One practice.

I bring four distinct vantage points to that work. They overlap, and each changes how I see the others.

The Business Leader: I have led as well as advised. I directed a multi-site family business in healthcare, held a senior role in a Fortune 500 professional services company, and launched several ventures. I know what it feels like to carry the weight of a decision when the consequences are real and the pressure is yours to carry.

The Experiential Educator: My roots are in experiential learning. Early in my career I was an outdoor pursuits instructor at Plas y Brenin, the UK’s National Outdoor Centre. I saw how real learning happens when people step into uncertainty together, by doing, sensing and reflecting, not just listening. That ethos still anchors everything I design and deliver today, deepened by years as faculty in executive education, working with thousands of leaders across sectors and continents.

The Global Citizen: I have lived in Spain for over fifteen years and worked across Asia, the Middle East, the Americas and Europe. I am fluent in Spanish and familiar with the realities of cross-cultural leadership: how differently power, decision-making and conflict can be interpreted around the world, and what that means for leaders operating across borders.

The Digital Pioneer: I have worked in remote and hybrid environments for over two decades, long before it became the norm. I understand how trust, presence and influence are built when people are not in the same room. For leaders in international and mission-driven organisations, this is not a footnote; it is part of the job.

How I think

I view leadership as systemic, political and deeply human.

I am interested in what is actually happening around a leader, not simply what a leadership model says ought to be happening. Who has influence? What assumptions are shaping the situation? Where are the competing interests? What is the formal structure encouraging? What are people reluctant to say? What might change if we looked at the problem differently?

Systems thinking and complexity has profoundly influenced how I approach those questions. It helps me resist the temptation to reduce a complicated organisational situation to a difficult individual, a communication problem or a neat set of competencies. My commercial experience keeps that thinking grounded in the realities of P&L, incentives, customers and organisational structure. My background in design and experiential learning adds another instinct: rather than waiting for perfect certainty, what could we try, observe and learn from?

That combination matters to me because I have little interest in clever ideas that remain clever ideas.

I sometimes describe myself as a pracademic: someone who takes research and theory seriously but insists on testing them against the untidiness of organisational life. Whether I am coaching one executive, facilitating a leadership team or designing an executive education programme, the question is ultimately the same:

Does this help someone see more clearly and make a better next move?