The politics is the material. Clear-eyed optimism is the method.

Two halves of one job

For twenty years I've done two things that turned out to be the same thing. I help leaders and teams see their organisations clearly, all the invisible politics and power that decide what's actually possible. And I help them believe those things can change, then do the unglamorous work of changing them.

I've done it in genuinely hard places, not a seminar room. At the Treasury I was a programme manager on the scheme that helped keep major UK banks standing through the financial crisis. During the pandemic I was the senior responsible owner for a national community testing service, leading a team of 200 through about as much uncertainty as a job can hold. I've been a Chief Digital Officer, building a government department's digital capability from scratch. These days I do this work at Public Digital, and with leaders in other organisations and other countries.

None of those were places for wishful thinking. Seeing clearly without believing it can move just makes you a very well-informed cynic. Believing it can move without seeing clearly makes you the upbeat manager who won't admit anything's on fire. Neither gets you anywhere. The useful stance is the one in between: honest about how things really are, stubborn that they can get better, practical about closing the gap. Clear-eyed optimism.

I'm no natural at it, for the record. Put me in a room of sunny optimists and I'm the one pointing at the risks; put me in a room of pessimists and I'm the naive one. I think critically, not negatively, and there's a real difference between the two.

I'm a writer, a speaker, a coach and a facilitator, and a student of behavioural psychology (which mostly means I try hard to get the evidence right, and to call out a seductive statistic when I see one). I grew up working-class, and I've never quite lost the chip on my shoulder about who gets overlooked and why, which is probably why so much of my work comes back to power and who holds it. I'm a mother and a feminist.

If you're tired of "good vibes only", and just as tired of the people who've decided nothing round here will ever change, you and I are going to get on.