Reading
What I am reading and thinking about.
A leader is only as current as their curiosity. This is a working list — the books, reports and questions occupying my attention now. It changes often.
On the desk
Books
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
A durable reminder that most decisions — including technology ones — are shaped by how we think, not just what we know.
The Innovator's Dilemma
Clayton M. Christensen
Still the clearest account of why capable organisations struggle to change, which is much of my work.
Team of Teams
General Stanley McChrystal
On adaptability and shared awareness in complex organisations — themes that map neatly onto large technology programmes.
Designing Data-Intensive Applications
Martin Kleppmann
A grounding text I return to whenever data architecture conversations drift from first principles.
The Phoenix Project
Gene Kim, Kevin Behr & George Spafford
A useful, human illustration of why delivery flow matters as much as the technology itself.
Good Strategy / Bad Strategy
Richard Rumelt
A sharp lens for telling real strategy apart from ambition dressed up as a plan.
In the reading queue
Research & reports
Alongside books, I follow research on the direction of enterprise technology — regulatory and supervisory publications relevant to European financial services, industry analyst research on data and AI adoption, and the engineering write-ups that major technology organisations publish on how they build and operate at scale. I read these for signal on where the field is heading, not for prescriptions.
Questions on my mind
What I am exploring
- How should institutions govern AI so that trust and speed reinforce, rather than fight, each other?
- What does it take for a data product to remain valuable years after it ships?
- How do we measure the value of data and AI in terms a board recognises?
- Where is the real line between useful and excessive architectural complexity?