The Boardroom Coach

The Boardroom Coach
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The Boardroom Coach: The audio briefing from John McLaughlan, Non Executive Director, Executive Coach and Board Advisor. Each episode takes one live signal from business, leadership, or organisational life and examines what it really reveals beneath the surface. Not just what happened, but what it means for judgement, accountability, behaviour, and consequence. theboardroomcoach.substack.com

  1. Aug 17

    AI and Critical Thinking: Protecting Leadership Judgement

    Psychology and workplace research is beginning to raise a more difficult question about AI: whether visible performance can improve faster than the judgement supporting it. That distinction matters because AI can make work look better very quickly. The harder question is whether the person producing it is still exercising enough independent judgement to challenge, reconstruct and defend the conclusion. What’s Happening Research is beginning to distinguish between AI that assists thinking and AI that progressively removes the need to think through the task. A 2025 Microsoft Research study surveyed 319 knowledge workers and collected 936 first-hand examples of people using generative AI in their work. Higher confidence in GenAI was associated with less reported critical thinking, while greater confidence in people’s own ability to perform the task was associated with more critical engagement. The researchers also found that critical thinking changed shape around AI, shifting towards information verification, response integration and maintaining oversight of the task. The study is observational, so the findings show associations rather than causation. (Lee et al., 2025) Experimental evidence raises a related question about skill formation. Anthropic ran a randomised controlled study involving 52 mostly junior software engineers who were learning to use an unfamiliar Python library. Participants using AI assistance scored an average of 50% on a subsequent knowledge assessment, compared with 67% for those who worked without AI. The AI-assisted group completed the original task around two minutes faster on average, but the productivity difference was not statistically significant. (Shen and Tamkin, 2026) The pattern within the Anthropic study is particularly relevant. Participants who largely delegated coding or debugging to AI tended to perform poorly on the subsequent assessment. Those who used AI to ask conceptual questions, request explanations or test their understanding tended to perform better. The researchers are careful not to claim that these interaction styles caused the differences in learning, but the pattern points towards a distinction between using AI to complete work and using it while remaining cognitively engaged. (Shen and Tamkin, 2026) A 2026 paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences places this in the wider history of cognitive offloading. The authors conclude that handing cognitive activity to AI can impede skill acquisition and contribute to skill decay, while emphasising that the risk depends considerably on what is being offloaded and how the technology is used. (Cash et al., 2026) The American Psychological Association’s July 2026 review reaches a similarly measured conclusion. It notes evidence that heavy reliance on generative AI can reduce critical-thinking activity and job-specific skill development, while structured use can preserve more human engagement. It also stresses that many questions about longer-term cognitive consequences remain unresolved. (Abrams, 2026) The evidence does not establish that challenging AI preserves leadership judgement. It supports a narrower and more useful proposition. The cognitive consequences of AI appear to depend partly on how much verification, evaluation, independent problem-solving and human oversight remain in the work. “Psychology and workplace research is beginning to raise a more difficult question about AI: whether visible performance can improve faster than the judgement supporting it.That distinction matters because AI can make work look better very quickly. The harder question is whether the person producing it is still exercising enough independent judgement to challenge, reconstruct and defend the conclusion.” What’s Being Said Most organisational discussion about AI still concentrates on adoption and productivity. How quickly are people using it? How much time is being saved? Which workflows can be automated? How good are the prompts becoming? How much more output can people produce? Those questions are commercially understandable. They are also easier to measure than what may be happening underneath the output. A document can improve while the person producing it practises less of the reasoning required to create one independently. A junior employee can produce work that looks considerably more experienced than the judgement behind it. An executive can review a sophisticated recommendation without ever having developed an independent position against which to test it. That creates a difficult possibility. Visible capability may improve faster than underlying judgement. The exposure may therefore remain hidden until the situation no longer fits the pattern the technology has already seen. “Visible capability may improve faster than underlying judgement.” What I’ve Noticed Perhaps the safest way to use AI isn’t to teach people how to get better answers from it. It may be to teach them how to disagree with it intelligently. Much of the training around generative AI understandably focuses on extraction. Write a better prompt. Give the system more context. Specify the format. Refine the answer. Automate the routine work. All useful. Professional judgement develops rather differently. It develops when something refuses to fit. You form a view before everyone else has one. Evidence conflicts with experience. A forecast looks technically defensible but commercially unlikely. A recommendation sounds persuasive, yet one assumption keeps bothering you. You stay with the discomfort long enough to understand why. Those moments are inefficient. They are also where judgement accumulates. AI is exceptionally good at removing cognitive friction. That is part of its value. The more demanding question is which friction wastes time and which friction develops capability. That distinction may matter more than adoption rates. “Perhaps the safest way to use AI isn’t to teach people how to get better answers from it.It may be to teach them how to disagree with it intelligently.” What This Means The organisational exposure may initially resemble progress. Papers arrive faster. Analysis becomes cleaner. Meetings are better prepared. People process greater volumes of information. Junior employees appear capable of operating further beyond their experience. Executives can move between issues with analytical support that would previously have required considerably more time. None of those outcomes should cause concern on their own. The tension appears when capability with the system develops faster than capability to evaluate the system. People become experienced partly by encountering consequences. They make imperfect judgements. They discover where assumptions fail. They learn which questions should have been asked earlier. They recognise patterns because they have previously watched those patterns unfold badly. Much of that development occurs through doing difficult work. If AI progressively completes the cognitively difficult parts of the task, organisations may eventually find that the quality of visible output has developed faster than the judgement supporting it. That becomes particularly important in succession and promotion. A future senior leader may arrive with years of excellent AI-assisted output, increasingly sophisticated analysis and apparent exposure to complex decisions. The question will be how much of the underlying judgement was actually exercised. For experienced executives, there is a different pressure. Years of accumulated judgement make AI enormously useful because there is something substantial against which to test its output. Pressure can change how consistently that judgement is exercised. A late paper arrives. The diary is full. The recommendation is coherent. The assumptions appear reasonable. AI has already synthesised the evidence. Review can quietly become acceptance without anyone consciously deciding that it should. The twenty minutes saved may have contained the doubt that would otherwise have changed the decision. The developmental challenge around AI may therefore be less about protecting people from technology and more about protecting the moments in which judgement is still required. “Pressure Test” Discover where your organisatin is leaking critical thinking Pressure-test this: If AI disappeared tomorrow from one important decision process in your organisation, would the people responsible for that decision still possess enough independent understanding to reconstruct the reasoning, challenge its assumptions and defend the conclusion? If that produces hesitation or disagreement, responsibility and understanding may have begun moving apart. The first senior move is unlikely to involve reducing AI adoption. It is to identify the moments of judgement that are commercially too important to remove from the human part of the process. The productivity case for AI is becoming easier to see. The judgement question will take longer to surface because the early signs may look like improved performance. The organisations worth watching will be those that learn which cognitive friction can safely disappear and which must remain because capability, challenge and accountability still depend on it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theboardroomcoach.substack.com

  2. Jul 22

    Why Board Independence Is Not Enough During a Corporate Turnaround

    What’s Happening Diageo chair Sir John Manzoni is reportedly looking to reshape the company’s board by recruiting non-executive directors with commercial experience in the drinks industry or drinks distribution. The Financial Times reported on 21 July 2026 that Manzoni was seeking industry “heavyweights” as Diageo confronts a serious downturn in spirits demand. The report said the company’s 11-person board has only one non-executive director who has previously held a senior role at a spirits company. It also suggested that Manzoni wants directors with enough industry knowledge and standing to challenge new chief executive Sir Dave Lewis during an ambitious restructuring. Financial Times, 21 July 2026 Reuters, reporting on the Financial Times story, said the concern was whether the existing board had sufficient industry insight to guide Lewis or recognise if the turnaround began moving too far. Diageo responded that the board already has relevant consumer experience and that Manzoni supports its existing directors while continuing to seek the right balance of skills and backgrounds. Reuters, 21 July 2026 The reported board changes are being considered as Lewis moves quickly to restructure the company. Reuters reported on 17 June that he had asked executives to reduce headcount and other costs as part of the overhaul. Reuters, 17 June 2026 The Financial Times has also reported that Lewis is changing aspects of Diageo’s strategy, including lowering prices on some brands and increasing investment in ready-to-drink products. The changes represent a significant test of assumptions that have shaped the company’s approach to premiumisation, brand investment and growth. Financial Times, 21 July 2026 Manzoni became chair in February 2025 after serving as a Diageo non-executive director. At the time of his appointment, the company highlighted his experience leading complex global organisations and his previous board experience at SABMiller. Diageo, 19 March 2024 Diageo’s published governance material places responsibility for board composition and succession within its nominations process. Manzoni’s 2025 chair’s statement also identified the appointment of the right chief executive, support for the leadership team and the restoration of consistent growth among the board’s immediate priorities. Diageo Annual Report 2025 and Diageo Chair’s Statement 2025 “Independence is not enough when the board has to challenge a turnaround CEO” What’s Being Said The immediate discussion will focus on whether Diageo’s current directors have enough sector experience, who might be appointed and whether the reported search implies dissatisfaction with the existing board. That framing is understandable. It also risks turning a significant governance question into a comparison of biographies. Consumer experience, financial expertise and formal independence all matter. Yet turnaround conditions change the work a board is being asked to perform. Directors are no longer overseeing a relatively stable strategy. They are assessing a sequence of connected decisions made quickly, under pressure and with incomplete evidence. The question is whether the board collectively understands enough of the commercial system to challenge those decisions properly. “Turnaround conditions change the work a board is being asked to perform” What I’ve Noticed Board independence gives directors permission to challenge. It does not automatically give them the confidence to know where challenge is needed. That distinction becomes more important when a forceful new chief executive arrives with a clear mandate for change. A turnaround CEO will often move faster than the organisation is accustomed to. Costs may be removed, leadership roles changed, investment priorities reset and long-held assumptions about customers, pricing or routes to market challenged. Much of that urgency may be justified. Some of it may be overdue. The board must still distinguish productive disruption from damage that will only become visible several reporting periods later. That requires more than general commercial intelligence. Directors need enough knowledge of customers, distribution economics, brand investment, pricing behaviour and operational dependencies to recognise which assumptions deserve closer attention. Without that knowledge, challenge can remain technically correct but commercially shallow. Management can answer every question and still leave the central risk untouched. “A turnaround CEO will often move faster than the organisation is accustomed to” What This Means A board can be formally independent, experienced and conscientious, yet remain poorly equipped for the particular conditions facing the business. Turnarounds expose that gap because the board’s contribution must become more specific. During a stable period, broad experience can help directors test strategy, risk and performance. During a difficult transformation, the board must judge the relationship between decisions. A pricing move may protect volume while weakening brand position. Cost removal may improve margins while reducing commercial capability. A distribution change may release working capital while damaging relationships that took years to build. A leadership restructure may improve pace while concentrating too much information and authority around a small number of executives. These decisions cannot be assessed properly in isolation. Sector expertise does not guarantee sound judgement. Familiarity creates blind spots of its own. A board populated entirely by industry veterans may become too attached to accepted practices or too confident in assumptions formed under different market conditions. The requirement is not sector purity. It is enough relevant knowledge, combined with sufficient independence, to interrogate the executive without either deferring to confidence or defending convention. That balance becomes harder to establish once a turnaround has gathered momentum. “The Pressure Test” Pressure-test this: Could the board identify the three assumptions within the current transformation plan that would cause the greatest commercial damage if management were confidently wrong? Hesitation may not indicate weak governance. It may show that the board’s composition and information environment were designed for a different phase of the company’s life. The first response is not automatically to replace directors. It is to make the capability gap explicit and decide how it will be closed before momentum makes meaningful challenge harder. Independence gives a board permission to challenge. Expertise gives it the confidence to know what to challenge. If this feels familiar, it is worth having the conversation before the numbers force it. Some leadership tensions are easier to resolve while they are still private. If this resonated with you and you’d like to discuss anything in confidence, use the link below This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theboardroomcoach.substack.com

  3. Jun 29

    AI Is Reshaping C-Suite Roles, But Accountability Is the Harder Test

    What’s Happening Harvard Business Review has framed AI as a change affecting the top of the organisation, not only junior roles or operational teams. Its June 2026 piece argues that senior leadership, executive, C-suite and board responsibilities are being redefined by AI adoption. (Harvard Business Review) “AI is reshaping C-suite and board roles.” What’s Being Said The wider executive conversation is moving in the same direction. The Conference Board’s 2026 C-Suite Outlook says AI has moved from the margins of corporate strategy to the centre of executive decision-making, with leaders trying to manage value, scale and risk at the same time. (The Conference Board) IBM’s 2026 CEO study reports that 76% of surveyed organisations now have a Chief AI Officer, up from 26% in 2025, while 85% of respondents say all functional leaders must become technology experts in their own domain. (IBM Newsroom) What I’ve Noticed The appointment of AI leaders may create comfort faster than it creates accountability. A new title can make an organisation feel as though ownership has been resolved. In practice, it can hide the harder question. Who owns the consequences when AI changes pricing, hiring, customer service, compliance, forecasting, capital allocation or operational risk? The board does not need to code. But it does need to know where accountability sits. “The appointment of AI leaders may create comfort faster than it creates accountability.” What This Means AI is becoming a role-design problem before it becomes a technology problem. The risk for many leadership teams is that AI becomes distributed in use but concentrated nowhere in ownership. The CIO may own infrastructure. The Chief AI Officer may own capability. The HR director may own workforce impact. The CFO may own investment scrutiny. Legal may own exposure. Operations may own deployment. The board may believe it has oversight. That structure can work. It can also create a beautifully populated accountability gap. Deloitte’s AI governance roadmap points boards towards questions of AI maturity, current and future use, risk oversight, governance structure and management ownership. (Deloitte) Those are not technical questions dressed up for directors. They are judgement questions. They ask whether the organisation understands what it is allowing AI to influence, who can challenge it, and where responsibility moves when decisions become faster, more automated and less visible. “Pressure Test” Pressure Test: If an AI-enabled decision caused commercial, regulatory or reputational damage, could your senior team explain, without rehearsal, who owned the decision, who had the authority to challenge it, and why the organisation accepted that level of risk? Hesitation would not necessarily mean negligence. It may reveal that AI has moved faster than the organisation’s ownership model. Disagreement may reveal that accountability is being assumed rather than designed. A confident answer from only one function may reveal that the issue is still being held too narrowly. The first senior move is not another AI presentation. It is to map the decisions AI is already influencing, identify where judgement has become blurred, and make ownership visible before external pressure tests it for you. If this feels familiar, or resonated with you, secure a complimentary session with The Boardroom Coach. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theboardroomcoach.substack.com

  4. Jun 20

    AI, Social Media Bans and The Capture: How Institutions Redesign Reality

    ““Correction”, a covert practice that uses deepfake technology to manipulate evidence, perception and public reality.” Argentina’s AI-company proposal, the UK’s under-16 social media ban and the BBC’s The Capture all point to the same leadership pattern: institutions relaxing ethical boundaries when pressure, protection or profit make the compromise feel justified. AI governance, institutional manipulation and the ethical drift from board decisions to government policy. What’s Happening Argentina is exploring a legal framework that could allow AI-operated “non-human companies” to exist with limited liability. The proposal has been framed as part of a wider attempt to attract AI investment, data-centre development and technology capital into Argentina through favourable legal and fiscal conditions. Reports in Argentina say these AI-run companies would have to identify themselves in their articles of incorporation and would be liable with their own assets for damage caused by autonomous AI systems. Critics argue that this may create a legal shell with no meaningful human accountability behind it. (Buenos Aires Herald) At the same time, the UK government has announced plans to ban social media platforms from offering services to under-16s, with protections expected to come into force in spring 2027. The government says the move will “give kids their childhood back” and will apply to major user-to-user platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook and X, while excluding messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal. (GOV.UK) Both stories sit uncomfortably close to the fictional world of The Capture, the BBC drama built around “Correction”, a covert practice that uses deepfake technology to manipulate evidence, perception and public reality. Series three returned to a world where Rachel Carey is trying to resist opaque systems, unreliable digital imagery and institutional manipulation that has already become politically embedded. (The Guardian) What’s Being Said Argentina’s supporters present the AI-company idea as bold legal innovation. The argument is that autonomous AI activity is coming anyway, and that a recognised entity structure may make it more visible, taxable and governable. Critics see something more dangerous: a jurisdiction inviting capital by reducing the human weight of responsibility. In the UK, the government is presenting the under-16 social media ban as a protective intervention. Parents are being told the state is siding with families over technology companies. Critics are raising practical and ethical concerns, including enforcement, privacy, exclusion of vulnerable children, and the risk that young people are pushed into less visible online spaces. Disability campaigners have warned that a blanket ban could cut off important sources of connection, support and independence for disabled children. (The Guardian) “Once powerful institutions persuade themselves that the objective is urgent enough, they start redesigning the boundary between what is acceptable and what is useful.” What I’ve Noticed The signal is not AI. It is permission. Once powerful institutions persuade themselves that the objective is urgent enough, they start redesigning the boundary between what is acceptable and what is useful. The language changes first. Compromise becomes innovation. Restriction becomes protection. Surveillance becomes assurance. Manipulation becomes correction. Commercial advantage becomes national strategy. The danger rarely arrives as an open abandonment of ethics. It arrives as a justified exception. “Governance Pressure Test” Pressure-test: Where are we currently accepting a mechanism because we approve of the stated objective? That is the question serious leaders need to sit with. If the answer is unclear, the organisation may already be relying on the emotional strength of the goal to protect the weakness of the governance. If people hesitate, disagree or retreat into technical language, the discomfort is useful. It may show that ownership has become distributed, accountability has become abstract, and the decision has become easier to defend than to truly understand. The first senior move is to make the mechanism visible. Not the intention. Not the slide that says why the decision matters. The mechanism. Who decides. Who benefits. Who is excluded. Who can challenge. Who carries loss. Who can stop the system when it begins producing outcomes that were not part of the original promise. That is where the real leadership test now sits. The future will not only be shaped by those who build powerful technology. It will be shaped by those who decide how much ethical distance they are willing to tolerate between decision, consequence and accountability. Did This resonate with you? Secure a complimentary and cofidential 1:1 below. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theboardroomcoach.substack.com

  5. Jun 4

    How to Recognise When Your Organisation Is Filtering Out Challenge, And What You Can Do

    What happens when challenge is present, but no longer powerful enough to change the decision. What’s Happening A current governance debate in the US has raised concern that corporate boards may have greater power to exclude shareholder proposals from annual general meetings. Reuters reports that ESG investors fear this could weaken one of the routes through which smaller investors, NGOs and minority voices surface risks before they become formally visible. Supporters argue that tighter control protects companies from distraction, cost and activist overreach. (Reuters) The executive coaching signal sits underneath the governance argument. Most leadership teams do not remove challenge by saying they do not want it. They remove it through process, timing, hierarchy, tone and fatigue. The system still looks open. People are still invited to comment. Risks are still recorded. Concerns are still noted. But the challenge arrives too late, too softly or too indirectly to influence the decision. That is when an executive team can feel aligned while the organisation beneath it is in disagreement. “An executive team can feel aligned while the organisation beneath it is in disagreement.” What’s Being Said The public debate is framed around control, shareholder rights, board authority and governance efficiency. Reuters notes that some investors see shareholder proposals as early warnings of neglected risk, while business groups argue that the process can be misused by campaigners pursuing narrow political or social agendas. (Reuters) Executives will recognise the internal version of the same argument. “We have already covered this.” “We need to move now.” “This is more of an operational issue.” “Let’s not reopen the decision.” “Bring it back when the evidence is stronger.” Each phrase may be reasonable. The pattern is the warning. When those phrases regularly appear at the point where uncomfortable evidence enters the room, the system may no longer be testing the decision. It may be protecting it. What I’ve Noticed When challenge is filtered out, the first symptom is often a better meeting. The agenda is tighter. The papers are cleaner. The discussion is shorter. The decision feels easier to land. People stop circling back to unresolved concerns. The executive group experiences this as pace, maturity and discipline. The friction has not disappeared. It has moved. It shows up in delayed delivery, repeated rework, late escalation, private disagreement, customer irritation, operational fatigue and quiet resistance from people who know the decision will be harder to execute than the room wants to believe. One of the clearest symptoms is a gap between approval and execution. The decision is made with confidence, but the organisation takes longer than expected to absorb it. Teams reinterpret it. Risks reappear under different headings. The same issue comes back three months later with a different owner and a higher cost. Another symptom is late surprise. Senior leaders hear about a problem only when it has become expensive, reputational or politically difficult. Afterwards, people can usually trace the early signals. Someone had concerns. A customer pattern was visible. A supplier had raised a warning. A finance assumption looked optimistic. An operator had doubts. None of it carried enough authority to slow the decision while it was still cheap to adjust. Challenge also starts to depend on personality. There are one or two people who can say the difficult thing. Everyone else waits to see whether they will. That may look like strong individual leadership, but it is a fragile system. It means truth is travelling through personal courage rather than governance design. The personal symptoms matter too. A leader may notice irritation when challenge appears. The cautious colleague begins to feel negative. The operational concern feels too detailed. The finance warning feels conservative. The non-executive question feels theoretical. Under pressure, challenge can start to feel like drag rather than protection. Another signal is relief when nobody pushes back. That relief is understandable. Senior responsibility is tiring. But when the absence of challenge feels calming, the team may be becoming more attached to progress than to truth. “One of the clearest signals is the ever widening gap between decision making and execution. Faster decisions - slower delivery.” What This Means The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster remains one of the clearest historical examples of this pattern. The Rogers Commission found that the decision-making process leading to the January 28, 1986 launch was seriously flawed. It concluded that rising doubts about the solid rocket booster joint seal were not properly flagged through a well-structured system, and that Morton Thiokol management reversed its position and recommended launch contrary to the views of its engineers. (NASA) That is the leadership lesson. The warning was present. The technical concern was known. The people closest to the risk had spoken. But as the decision travelled through pressure, hierarchy, interpretation and managerial judgement, the challenge lost force. Most organisations are not launching spacecraft, although some transformation programmes appear to be testing whether gravity is merely a mindset issue. The pattern is still familiar. The expert concern becomes too technical. The operational warning becomes too local. The finance caution becomes too conservative. The customer signal becomes anecdotal. The person raising friction becomes difficult, negative or badly timed. Then the meeting moves on. For executive teams, the question is not whether people are allowed to challenge. Most organisations can prove that they are. The sharper question is whether challenge has enough authority to alter a decision before the organisation becomes invested in defending it. Weak signals rarely arrive in a polished form. They come as hesitation, awkward data, customer noise, repeated operational friction, unusual turnover, supplier concern or a colleague who keeps returning to the same point after everyone else has moved on. If the system requires every warning to be perfectly evidenced, perfectly timed and perfectly framed before it is taken seriously, the organisation has created a very narrow doorway for reality to pass through. “How can we test for this dynamic?” Pressure-test: Take one important decision currently moving through your organisation. Before it becomes difficult to reverse, identify the person or signal most likely to tell you it is weaker than it looks. If that person sits outside the main decision group, if the signal is being treated as operational noise, or if the concern depends on someone finding the confidence to raise it at exactly the right moment, the system is filtering challenge. That does not mean the decision is wrong. It means the decision may be travelling without enough contact with reality. The first senior move is not to ask for more opinions. It is to make useful friction visible while it can still influence the outcome. Name the assumptions being made. Identify what evidence would change the decision. Clarify who has permission to slow the decision down before the cost rises. Hesitation around this question usually reveals something important. It may show that challenge exists informally but has no protected route. It may show that dissent is tolerated only from certain people. It may show that the team has mistaken decisiveness for decision quality. The question isn’t whether your organisation welcomes challenge. It’s whether challenge still has enough authority to interrupt a decision before the organisation becomes invested in proving it right. If this feels familiar, you’d like to explore further, and in confidence, then follow the link below for a complimentary 1:1 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theboardroomcoach.substack.com

  6. Jun 3

    Internal CxO Succession: The Boardroom Signal Behind Independent Executive Coaching

    What’s Happening Currys has appointed Fredrik Tønnesen as Group Chief Executive, effective 3 August 2026. He succeeds Alex Baldock, who is stepping down after eight years and is expected to join Boots later this year. Tønnesen currently leads Currys’ Nordics division, which accounts for around 40% of group revenue, and began his career in the business as a sales assistant before moving through senior operational roles. (Reuters) The appointment comes after a period in which Currys has been rebuilding confidence. Reuters reports that the company recently forecast an 18% rise in annual profit, supported by a 3% increase in underlying sales in the UK and Ireland. (Reuters) What’s Being Said The public story is reassuring. Internal successor. Deep company knowledge. Proven operator. Continuity after a turnaround. That is why the appointment looks clean. It gives investors and employees a sense that the business is not lurching into a new chapter, but carrying forward momentum under someone who knows the system well. The quieter question is whether the appointment creates a new mandate, or simply the same playbook with a different cover. “Continuity is comforting because it makes succession look controlled.” What I’ve Noticed Continuity is comforting because it makes succession look controlled. A business emerging from a turnaround often becomes attached to the leader who restored confidence. Over time, people learn how that leader thinks, what they challenge, what they tolerate and which decisions need their judgement before they feel safe. The chief executive becomes part of the organisation’s decision habits. When that leader leaves, the appointment is only the visible part of succession. The deeper test is whether authority, confidence and decision quality can transfer. That is where the executive observations become more useful as questions. A chair might ask whether the new CEO has inherited real authority, or simply goodwill from a business that wants to stay reassured. A CFO might ask whether the transition will protect decision speed and capital discipline, or whether courtesy around succession will make difficult choices slower. A people leader might ask whether long-standing colleagues are ready to relate to a familiar executive differently, especially those who knew him before the title changed. A Senior Independent Director might ask whether the CEO has enough independent challenge to think clearly under pressure, while remaining open to proper board scrutiny. Those questions are not about whether the individual is capable. They are about whether the organisation is ready for the authority structure to change. What This Means Independent executive coaching becomes more commercially credible when it is framed as protection for the organisation, not support for the individual. An internal successor carries trust, knowledge and cultural memory. They also inherit old assumptions, past loyalties, informal alliances and expectations about how they will behave. Some of that history helps. Some of it quietly limits the authority shift. The organisational benefit of independent coaching is that it gives judgement somewhere clean to go before decisions harden. It creates a confidential space outside the previous leadership model, outside internal politics and outside the need to reassure everyone that continuity means comfort. Independence matters because the coach is not part of the existing story. They have no operating territory, no internal constituency and no reason to protect the old playbook. That allows challenge without politics and reflection without performance. For the organisation, the value is sharper succession discipline. The CEO gets clearer thinking under pressure. The board gets more confidence that the transition is being actively held. The executive team gets clearer signals about mandate, ownership and the next phase of performance. “Is internal succession a new mandate? Or an old playbook with a new cover?” Pressure-test: Can the board and executive team say, clearly and privately, what the new CEO must now change, not only what he must protect? If that creates hesitation, succession may still be framed too heavily around reassurance. The first senior move is to separate the handover from the mandate. One protects continuity. The other defines where fresh judgement is now required. If this feels familiar and a confidential conversation would be of benefit, follow the links below. Some leadership tensions are easier to resolve while they are still private. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theboardroomcoach.substack.com

  7. Jun 2

    The quiet compression of leadership under sustained pressure.

    When people still believe in the work but feel less well supported, the issue is often not motivation. It is the quiet compression of leadership under sustained pressure. What’s Happening Microsoft employees are reportedly feeling more energised and empowered to do meaningful work, while also scoring managers lower on coaching, feedback and motivation. Business Insider reports that Microsoft’s latest internal Employee Signals survey showed its “Thriving” score rising three points to 79, but a separate Manager and Leader Signals survey showed weaker responses on whether managers coach people through day-to-day challenges, give clear feedback and motivate people to do their best work. (Business Insider) The survey sits against a wider backdrop of change. Microsoft has increased performance pressure, changed elements of its HR and reward systems, and offered a voluntary buyout programme to some employees. Reuters reported in April that the company was planning its first voluntary employee buyout in its 51-year history, while also simplifying parts of the manager review process. (Reuters) Microsoft’s own description of Employee Signals matters here. The company says it uses the twice-yearly survey to help leaders, managers and HR identify strengths, improvement opportunities and how employees are thriving, which Microsoft defines as feeling energised and empowered to do meaningful work. (Microsoft) What’s Being Said The formal reading is balanced. Microsoft can point to higher energy, stronger empowerment and continued confidence in manager effectiveness. Business Insider reported that 85% of employees expressed confidence in their manager’s overall effectiveness, unchanged from the previous survey. (Business Insider) The more human reading is less comfortable. People may still believe in the work while feeling less well held by the leadership environment around them. They may feel proud of what they are contributing, yet less clear, less coached and less supported through the uncertainty of change. That is an important distinction for executive coaching. Employee energy can hide managerial depletion. Commitment can coexist with fatigue. High standards can start to narrow the emotional range of leaders who are trying to carry pressure without showing too much of it. What I’ve Noticed The most useful signal is the separation between meaningful work and felt support. That gap appears often in high-performing environments. People still care. They still want to win. They still identify with the mission. But the quality of leadership contact begins to thin. Conversations become more functional. Feedback becomes either delayed, softened or abrupt. Managers become better at passing on priorities than helping people metabolise the pressure behind those priorities. That does not usually begin with neglect. It begins with compression. A manager who is under pressure tends to shorten their time horizon. They move from development to delivery. They stop asking the second question. They rely more heavily on capable people. They mistake silence for resilience. They tell themselves there will be time for proper feedback once the current phase has passed. For senior leaders, this is where the coaching signal becomes sharp. Under sustained pressure, leaders often lose range before they lose effectiveness. They can still communicate, execute, drive results and remain respected. What reduces first is the quality of attention they give to others and to themselves. That is why the Microsoft signal is commercially useful beyond Microsoft. It shows how transformation pressure can reach the management layer long before it appears as open disengagement. What This Means The coaching implication is that leaders can become narrower versions of themselves while still looking successful. They may become more decisive, but less curious. More focused, but less available. More demanding, but less developmental. More fluent in the strategy, but less able to sense how that strategy is being experienced by the people expected to deliver it. This matters because coaching, feedback and motivation are not soft extras in a high-pressure environment. They are part of the transmission system. They determine whether people understand what matters, whether they can raise concerns early, whether they stay confident under ambiguity and whether performance pressure becomes useful or corrosive. Many leaders do not notice when their style has contracted. They experience themselves as responsible, stretched and focused. Other people experience them as harder to read, harder to interrupt and less present. That gap can become expensive because it changes what people bring forward. Less uncertainty gets voiced. Less disagreement surfaces. More people wait for clarity rather than shaping it. For executive coaching, the question is not whether leaders are working hard enough. They usually are. The question is whether their judgement, presence and challenge tolerance are still intact under the weight they are carrying. “Enthusiasm and energy are not the same as resilience” Pressure-test: Can your senior leaders and managers still hold useful coaching conversations, or have they become carriers of pace, performance and change? If there is hesitation, the organisation may still be performing while the leadership relationship is thinning. That is not failure. It is a sign that responsibility is being carried in a way that has started to narrow judgement, attention and presence. The first senior move is to restore the quality of leadership contact before it becomes an engagement problem. Not more communication. Better attention. Clearer feedback. More honest interpretation of pressure. Greater permission for managers to name what they are carrying before they pass it down unconsciously. If this feels familiar, it is worth having the conversation before the numbers force it. Some leadership tensions are easier to resolve while they are still private. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theboardroomcoach.substack.com

  8. May 29

    AI Is Quietly Breaking Lean Operating Systems

    AI is being sold as a route to leaner organisations, but many businesses are using it in a way that makes them operationally heavier. The uncomfortable pattern is simple. AI is increasing the amount of work entering organisations at the same time as leaders are using AI to justify workforce reduction. More work is being generated. Fewer people are available to absorb, review, prioritise, govern and complete it. That should concern anyone who understands lean properly. Lean was never simply a cost-cutting philosophy. The Toyota Production System was built around flow, quality, visibility, Just-in-Time and Jidoka. Toyota’s own explanation of Just-in-Time warns that without control, an organisation can accumulate “a mountain of parts” and still be unable to build the car. (トヨタ自動車株式会社 公式企業サイト) That warning now applies directly to knowledge work. The “mountain of parts” is no longer physical inventory. It is unfinished analysis, unread documents, overlapping initiatives, unmade decisions, unresolved escalations, duplicated experiments, unchecked AI outputs and exhausted managers trying to hold the system together. AI has made it easier than ever to create work. It hasn’t made organisations equally better at finishing that work. That is the Kanban breach and the first red flag that Lean Systems Thinking and organisational Ops Models are being underminned. “The Kanban Breach quietly underminning Lean Systems Thinking and Organisational Ops Models” Kanban’s discipline is not the card, the board or the ritual. It is the limit. Kanban University describes work-in-progress limits as a way to balance utilisation and protect flow in a pull system. (Kanban University) AI threatens that discipline because it removes the natural friction that previously constrained work creation. A senior leader can now generate more strategic options in an hour than their organisation can properly evaluate in a week. A team can produce more reports than decision-makers can read. A function can launch more pilots than the operating model can support. A manager can be handed more machine-generated material to review while also carrying a larger span of control because headcount has been reduced. The organisation appears productive. Flow is actually weakening. This is where the current AI productivity conversation becomes dangerously shallow. It measures the speed of production, but not the burden of absorption. It counts output, but not unfinished inventory. It celebrates automation, but rarely asks who now owns the review, judgement, escalation and quality burden. The evidence is already starting to point in that direction. Harvard Business Review has argued that AI can intensify work rather than reduce it. McKinsey’s 2025 workplace AI report found that almost all companies are investing in AI, but only 1% believe they are mature. TechRadar has reported on workers becoming “human middleware” between disconnected AI systems, while research on technostress links digital overload with multitasking burden and cognitive fatigue. (Harvard Business Review) That is the overlooked operating signal. AI is not only producing work faster. It is creating new review work, reconciliation work, governance work and decision work. Toyota itself offers a useful contrast. Toyota is exploring AI, but the public signals suggest a system-design logic rather than a simple labour-extraction logic. Google Cloud has described Toyota’s AI platform as one that empowers factory workers to develop and deploy machine-learning models across manufacturing use cases. Toyota Europe describes the essence of TPS as making work easier and less burdensome for workers, with Jidoka and Just-in-Time at its heart. (Google Cloud) That matters. Toyota appears to be asking how AI can strengthen the operating system. Many organisations are asking how AI can reduce the workforce while increasing output expectations. Those are not the same question. The first question is lean. The second can quietly become anti-lean. “AI is increasing the rate at which work is created while simultaneoulsy threatening the ability to sustain flow” Flow is the first principle under pressure. AI increases the rate at which work is started, but flow depends on the rate at which valuable work is completed. When more work enters the system than the organisation can absorb, lead times expand, decision quality drops and coordination burden rises. The system becomes busier, but less capable. Pull is also being weakened. Lean systems depend on downstream demand regulating upstream activity. AI encourages the opposite. Work is created because it can be created, not because the next part of the system is ready to receive it. That shifts organisations from pull back to push. Push systems create inventory. In knowledge work, that inventory hides inside calendars, inboxes, dashboards, Teams channels and executive packs. Respect for people is under pressure too. Toyota Europe describes TPS as making work easier and less burdensome. Many AI programmes are moving in the opposite direction. Fewer people are being asked to carry more complexity, more ambiguity, more review work and more fragmented accountability. The result is not only fatigue. It is weaker judgement. (Toyota EU) Jidoka, or built-in quality, is another exposed principle. AI outputs often look polished before they are trustworthy. That makes defects harder to detect. The burden shifts to humans who must inspect more material, faster, often with less context and less time. Kaizen is also being distorted. Continuous improvement becomes confused with continuous acceleration. More initiatives, more experiments and more outputs are treated as signs of progress. But improvement is not the same as movement. Standard work is being loosened. Employees are already redesigning how work happens around AI tools, often faster than governance, controls and operating procedures can catch up. Heijunka, or workload levelling, is becoming harder to protect. AI increases variability while many organisations remove the people who previously absorbed variation. Variability rises while resilience falls. This is the hidden shift. AI is moving organisations from labour-constrained systems to cognition-constrained systems. The scarce resource is no longer only headcount, hours or budget. It is attention, judgement, prioritisation, review capacity, ownership clarity and the ability to stop work entering an already saturated system. Most operating models are not designed for that. That is why AI can make a business look leaner while making it more fragile. The visible cost base improves. The invisible operating burden grows. Middle management feels this first. These leaders become the shock absorbers of AI-enabled overproduction. They reconcile contradictory priorities, review synthetic outputs, manage larger spans and absorb the emotional load of teams carrying more work with fewer people. Then, because AI is expected to create efficiency, those same middle layers are often reduced. The organisation removes the very capacity that previously held complexity together. The work does not disappear. It redistributes into delay, rework, escalation, customer friction and poorer decisions. This is nothing other than a governance problem. “The Hidden Governance Problem” The hidden shift required is from productivity management to flow governance. Leaders need to govern the entry of work with the same seriousness they govern cost. They need to treat unfinished work as inventory. They need to ask whether AI is improving flow or merely increasing inflow. They need to know where review capacity sits, where quality is protected, where decisions queue, where ownership blurs and who has the authority to stop work before the system clogs. The most dangerous AI failure may not be a dramatic hallucination or a failed automation programme. It may be a quiet operating drift where the organisation becomes thinner, faster, busier and less capable of making high-quality decisions. Pressure-test: If AI reduces workforce capacity by 20% while increasing the volume of work your organisation can generate by 40%, where exactly does the system protect flow, quality and judgement? Who owns saying no? Who can stop work entering the system? Who sees unfinished cognitive inventory before it becomes customer impact, execution delay or leadership fatigue? If those answers are unclear, the organisation may not be becoming leaner. It may be converting visible labour cost into invisible operational risk. If this feels familiar, it is worth having a confidential conversation with The Boardroom Coach. Book an introduction with The Boardroom Coach This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theboardroomcoach.substack.com

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The Boardroom Coach: The audio briefing from John McLaughlan, Non Executive Director, Executive Coach and Board Advisor. Each episode takes one live signal from business, leadership, or organisational life and examines what it really reveals beneath the surface. Not just what happened, but what it means for judgement, accountability, behaviour, and consequence. theboardroomcoach.substack.com

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