How I think about: Organisational Maturity
Organisational maturity is the ability of an organisation to achieve complex objectives well, not merely quickly or by following a particular framework. A mature organisation can balance short-term delivery with long-term resilience, adapt to change, create value sustainably, and improve continuously across technical, operational, product, financial, and governance dimensions. Too often, organisations either underinvest in maturity, assume they can “do it later”, adopt frameworks without connecting them to outcomes, or optimise locally while ignoring the wider system. The challenge is that maturity growth competes with immediate delivery pressures, so it should be treated not as a problem to solve once, but as a polarity to manage continuously. Doing this well starts with an honest, evidence-based understanding of where the organisation really is, followed by clear choices about what needs to improve, why it matters, how success will be measured, and what investment is required. Done properly, growing maturity becomes one of the most important ways an organisation improves execution, innovation, adaptability, and long-term performance.
How I think about: Uncertainty
Uncertainty is a fundamental feature of both the world and the organisations we operate in, yet we are naturally inclined to resist it. We seek control through planning, analysis, and prediction, often underestimating how limited that control really is. In practice, uncertainty takes multiple forms, from gaps in knowledge (epistemic) to irreducible randomness (aleatory), as well as differences in understanding (ontological) and meaning (semantic). Treating all uncertainty as something that can simply be “reduced” leads to wasted effort and poor decisions. Instead, effective organisations learn to recognise the type of uncertainty they are dealing with, assess whether it is worth reducing, and invest accordingly. Just as importantly, they build the capability to operate under uncertainty by improving adaptability, decision-making, and systemic resilience. Rather than attempting to eliminate uncertainty entirely, the goal is to understand it, manage it, and where possible, use it to uncover opportunities.