daft laddie limited

Researching how organisations get stuck

I spent twenty years rescuing complex programmes in large organisations: messy, tangled programmes with exec-level sponsors and budgets into the hundreds of millions. I learned that failing programmes usually have a story that doesn’t reflect the reality on the ground, and you can’t out-argue that story from inside it. I immersed myself in what was actually happening, not what the plans or reports claimed, until I had a story I could trust; then I reshaped the programme and organisational ecology to remove barriers and reward the right behaviours.

Every programme was unique, but I kept spotting the same underlying patterns. I became curious about what actually generates those patterns in the first place, and why some patterns seem to show up at every scale: an individual, a team or an organisation.

And so I’ve spent the last two years researching and studying. I’ve immersed myself in primary material, not secondary summaries, building my own tentative synthesis and testing it where possible along the way. Recently that’s led me to explore complexity theory, neuroscience and cognitive science.

I’m currently developing this research into a startup, and I’m not yet at the point of drawing a full-time salary from it. So alongside that, I take on fractional and interim programme work — generally the kind of mess that’s actually interesting to untangle.

The name “Daft Laddie” comes from my ability to ask the seemingly daft questions which unlock new understanding.

Happy to talk about either: the research, or a live problem in your organisation.