There is a version of you that exists in rooms you will never enter.

In conversations that happen after you leave. In the way a decision you made last quarter gets described to someone who wasn’t there. In the shorthand a board member uses when your name comes up in a different context entirely.

That version of you — assembled quietly, without your involvement — is your reputation. Not the one you intend, the one that has accumulated.

Most senior leaders understand this in theory. Very few have thought carefully about what it means in practice. The gap between the reputation you’re building deliberately and the one forming in your absence isn’t fixed by a better LinkedIn presence or a sharper bio, it is a structural problem that sits at the level of how you make decisions, what you prioritise, and what you allow to speak on your behalf when you aren’t speaking.

I call this the narrative gap.

It is the distance between the story you believe you’re telling about your leadership and the story everyone else is quietly assembling from the evidence available to them. That evidence may not be your intentions, but it is your pattern of choices, read over time, by people who are drawing their own conclusions.

In Practice

I worked with a CEO recently who came to me focused on a specific problem. He was anxious about his executive presence and how he was perceived, and whether people took him seriously at the level he was now operating at. His instinct was to start with LinkedIn. To tighten the profile, post more consistently, develop a voice that matched his position, and he wanted help with the writing. He wanted someone who could work with his style and build something that felt authentically his.

That was a reasonable instinct, but it just wasn’t the right starting point.

Before we could architect anything outward, we needed to understand what was actually being received. Not what he hoped people or what he intended to project, but what was actually landing.

So before we touched a word of content, I went and asked his peoples. Not through a survey or an anonymous form but actual conversations. With people who worked alongside him, reported to him, and sat opposite him in the boardroom. I asked them what qualities he brought to a room. What they trusted him for. Where they felt his presence most, and where they noticed its absence.

What came back was not what he expected.

The qualities his colleagues named such as the precision under pressure, the willingness to hold a position when the room wanted to move on, the quality of his listening, were almost entirely absent from the story he was trying to tell about himself. He had been so focused on what he thought the executive level required of him that he had systematically underplayed the things that were already making him credible.

His narrative gap wasn’t a deficit. The substance was there but the architecture wasn’t.

That is where the work began. Not with a LinkedIn profile - although I did build a killer one and ghost wrote some engaging content - but with understanding the distance between the reputation he was accumulating and the one he was aware of and then building a narrative that closed that loop deliberately.

The gap opens slowly. A decision that looked pragmatic from the inside reads differently from the outside. A silence in a meeting that felt considered gets interpreted as detachment. A hire, a restructure, a missed conversation — each one becomes a data point in someone else’s narrative about what you actually value, what you’re actually building, who you actually are.

None of this is unfair. It is simply how reputation works. It is constructed from accumulated signals, and the question that matters is whether you are the one shaping that signal, or leaving it to chance.

This isn’t about optics it is about architecture. The difference is between dressing a building and designing the structure that determines how it stands.

This Friday in The Quiet Work, I am writing a premium piece on this, where I am going into the full framework of what narrative architecture actually involves at the executive level, why most leaders only discover the gap when it’s already costly to close, and what the ten-year compounding effect looks like when you get it right.

In Other News

I have been listening to Empires of AI by Karen Hao on Audible this week, and I would encourage anyone thinking seriously about leadership, power, and narrative to do the same.

Hao’s central argument is a discomfiting one, in that the story of artificial intelligence and its promises, risks and governance is being written almost exclusively by a small group of men with enormous capital and limited accountability. The policy implications follow the narrative. The environmental costs are absorbed quietly and the rest of us — users, citizens, leaders — are largely consuming a story we had no hand in shaping.

The reflection on Sam Altman is particularly instructive. Not as a character study in ambition, but as a case study in what happens to a reputation when the gap between public narrative and private reality becomes impossible to manage. The OpenAI board crisis of late 2023 revealed the narrative gao that had been widening for years. When the moment came, there was no coherent, consistent story to hold and in the absence of one, others wrote it.

That is a lesson that extends well beyond Silicon Valley. The executives who outlast their moments are those who understood early that their narrative was not a byproduct of their success. It was part of how they built it.

In Case you Missed it

I have wrapped up co-presenting the first season - yes, there is another in the pipeline - of the podcast with my mentor, Liam Black, called Walking Out Loud, produced by the team at Tandem. Go have a listen wherever you get your podcasts, drop a comment and give us some stars. Helps to boost the algorithm apparently.

An Invitation

If the ideas in this newsletter are ones you want to explore further — in your organisation, your leadership team, or your own practice — there are a few ways we can work together.

My keynotes and masterclasses are built for the moments when clarity matters most. If you are planning a leadership event, an offsite, or a conference and want a conversation that actually moves people, I would be glad to hear from you. Holla at me here.

For those who want to go deeper on the ideas here, the premium subscription to The Quiet Work offers longer essays, audio reflections, and more detailed explorations of leadership, reputation, and the realities of building something that lasts. If this newsletter lands for you, the premium tier is where the real work happens and I would love your support if you would subscribe and share this with others too.

Appreciate you reading this far and wish you well on your journey of leadership. Wherever it will take you.

Until next time, stay curious

David

(Me aged four or so)

I was born 57 years ago today.
A Monday afternoon in St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington.
The same hospital as the sons of the current King of England, amongst others.

Time has a way of compressing itself when viewed like this. Decades collapse into moments, and chapters of life begin to feel less like separate stories and more like a single thread, woven with intention, happenstance, and the occasional moment of clarity.

Over the years, one idea has continued to surface with increasing force.

The power of Decision-making.

It started in ways that led to where I am now, and it rarely announces itself as dramatic. It is the kind of decision-making that sits quietly in meeting rooms, behind closed doors, or in the stillness before a difficult conversation. The kind that shapes outcomes long before anyone else notices.

This is where leadership lives.

The work I have built through The BRAVE Leader has never been about leadership as performance. Titles, stages, and visibility have their place, yet they rarely define the true quality of leadership.

The real work shows up in the decisions that carry consequences.

The decisions about people when the stakes are personal.
The decisions about direction when certainty is absent.
The decisions about risk when the cost of getting it wrong feels uncomfortably high.

A consistent pattern appears across senior leadership.

Capability is rarely the issue, and neither is intelligence and intent; more often than not, it is present.

The issues are hesitation, delay and silence, at the exact moment clarity is required, this is often the issue.

Every delayed decision creates a quiet ripple. Over time, those ripples become culture. They shape performance, erode trust, and influence reputation in ways that are difficult to reverse.

The Problem Worth Solving

I feel increasingly drawn to working with executives on decision-making problems.

The ambition is simple in framing but complex in execution. More leaders making better decisions, earlier, and with greater awareness of consequence is so straightforward, but fear, shame and a host of other negative emotions stop so many from asking for help.

Client work remains a powerful way to address these problems. Rooms with executive teams offer depth, proximity, and the ability to intervene in real time.

Content offers something different. It travels, lingers and reaches those who may never sit in those rooms.

Writing, conversations, and shared ideas allow the work to extend beyond geography, beyond budget, and beyond immediate access.

The gap is clear.

Leadership development continues to prioritise models, frameworks, and strategy. Far less attention is given to the internal mechanics of decision-making under pressure. Even less attention is given to the emotional, relational, and ethical weight that accompanies those decisions.

This is where the work will continue to deepen.

In Other News

Recent conversations have allowed space to explore these ideas more openly.

• The Windrush Future

• Slow the F*ck Down

Each discussion offers a slightly different angle on leadership, responsibility, and the realities that sit beneath the surface of senior roles.

There is a quiet sense of anticipation about the year ahead.

The focus remains clear. Deeper work with the right people, sharper articulation of the ideas and greater reach through the platforms that allow the thinking to travel.

Growth, in this sense, feels less like expansion and more like refinement.

An Invitation

For those who have been reading, listening, or engaging with the work, there is genuine appreciation.

For those who want to go further, the premium subscription offers a deeper layer.

Longer essays.
Audio reflections.
More detailed explorations of leadership, decision-making, and the realities of building meaningful work.

Fifty-seven years in.

A continued commitment to clarity.
A continued respect for the weight of decisions.
A continued belief that leadership, at its best, is an act of courage exercised consistently over time.

Until next time,
David

p.s to my younger self. proud of how far you have come mate.

Credit: Zach Khandakji

Firstly, I know this issue is a day late, but we are here now.

Secondly……

This is one of the toughest markets I have ever experienced as a leadership consultant. Training budgets are being slashed, and there’s a rush to adopt “AI leadership” as a silver bullet (spoiler alert: it’s not). Between global conflict, inflation, and the general strangeness of the times, leadership development is in a very weird place.

But I still believe that once we’ve “inhaled” a bit, there is significant work to be done. As many organisations enter a new financial year, I’m encouraging those with responsibility to invest wisely, and yes, that includes me.

Here is what’s cooking for me for the next chapter:

• The New Book: I’m halfway through writing a business parable on leadership and decision making. Want a sneak peek? Ok, here’s a line
  ”La ni an chay bètafé ka kléwé an nwèsè-a”. Have fun.

• The BRAVE Leader Executive Programme: A cohort-based programme for CEOs, Founders, and MDs that I’ll be promoting soon.

• LeaderStory: A new product centred on how leaders master decision-making.

• Speaker Offerings: I’m adding Executive Briefings and Fireside Chats to the mix. Gotta keep it fresh.

The Highlight: THE BRAVE CRUCIBLE

One product I’m really excited about is THE BRAVE CRUCIBLE. Designed for senior leaders to see how they actually make decisions under pressure, this is built for team-building, away days, or strategy sessions.

The news lately is a blunt reminder that leaders need a robust “decision-making infrastructure”. It still surprises me how many senior executives either avoid tough calls or have never been trained on the models available to them.

Influenced by Tamara Littleton and the Polpeo team’s work in crisis communication, this programme parks the personality tests. Instead, it throws leaders into a fictional, industry-related “melting pot”. We measure mental models and resilience—essentially, it’s a pre-mortem strategy exercise to help teams build a thinking scaffold before a real crisis hits.

I’ve loved building this, and I’m looking forward to rolling it out globally over the next year. If you want to know more, holla at me.

In Other News...

Walking Out Loud: Season 1 is a Wrap! Liam Black and I have just finished the first season of our candid, “no BS” podcast. We use our combined experience to show exactly how we mentor and coach clients through challenging times. If you haven’t listened yet, what the hell is wrong with you? Go check it out.

We are currently planning Season 2 and looking for partners to help build this out.

It’s My Birthday Next Tuesday!

You should be able to guess my age from the picture above.
If you want to get me a “pressie,” I’d love two things:

1. Share this newsletter with your people.

2. Spread the word about my Premium Membership. This is where I do deep dives into my thinking around decision-making, leadership, and entrepreneurship

Until next time,

Stay curious

David

I have been thinking a lot lately about how companies' engines rest on capital. While there is a lot to be said for bootstrapping, most of the growing companies that are scaling, or looking to scale, know that financing is part of the journey. I have been sitting with this myself for a business idea I am developing, and it has brought me back to something I have seen play out many times over the years.

Over the course of my career, I have helped organisations across the UK and Europe raise over £150 million. Working with accelerators, navigating relationships with angels and VCs, and supporting non-profits in securing grants and impact funding. As a former accountant, I can find my way around a financial statement. I have helped seasoned technicians prepare for a data room — the repository used to store and share sensitive company documents during due diligence — and guided founders through the complexities of their capitalisation tables, the document that details equity ownership, share types, and the percentages held by founders, investors, and employees.

But here is what I keep coming back to, the part that does not get nearly enough airtime.

The hard work starts after the funding lands.

Nobody talks seriously about what you give up when you take the money. Not just equity, though that conversation matters, but something quieter and more fundamental. The way you get to make decisions changes permanently.

Every capital decision is simultaneously a statement of organisational values, a commitment to a set of relationships, and an irreversible bet on who the leader needs to become. When you accept an investment, you are not just accepting cash you are accepting a new cast of stakeholders with legitimate claims on your time, your thinking, and your direction. You are agreeing to a rhythm of governance from board meetings, reporting cycles, and performance expectations that will shape how you spend your attention for years. You are, whether you realise it or not, making a bet on your own identity as a leader.

And yet the question I rarely hear founders ask before a raise is this
What kind of CEO or founder do I need to be on the other side of this?

That question changes everything about how to prepare.

Because the skills that got you to the raise are not always the skills that will serve you after it. The founder who thrived in ambiguity, who could hold the company’s direction loosely and pivot on instinct, now has investors who need a coherent narrative and predictable milestones. The CEO who made every call alone now has a board that expects to be consulted. The leader who ran on passion and proximity now has to run on systems and delegation. None of that is necessarily bad but it is a different role, and many founders arrive at it unprepared, because they spent all of their energy getting to the close and none of it imagining what comes next.

The cost of capital is less about the interest rate or the dilution percentage and more about the identity shift it demands. The founder who understands that going in is far better positioned than the one who discovers it six months after the wire transfer hits.

This is the conversation I find myself having most often in my work as executive counsel, not the mechanics of the raise, but the leadership questions underlying it. What does accountability look like now?
Who do I need in my corner?
What habits of mind served me before that might now be liabilities?

If you are preparing for a raise or sitting with fresh capital, trying to find your footing, it might be worth asking yourself a few things before you go any further:

• What decisions will I no longer be able to make alone?

• How will I know if I am leading for my investors rather than my mission?

• What kind of leader does this next chapter actually require me to become?

These are not comfortable questions. But they are the right ones.

And in my experience, the answer to that question is usually where the quiet work is.

More on this in Friday’s audio essay, where I explore the real cost of raising capital and why leaders need to think much more deeply about who they are becoming, not just what they are building.

Until next time, David

Some of the most expensive decisions a leadership team ever makes are the ones they spend years not making.

That’s not a paradox, it’s a pattern and once you see it, you see it everywhere. In the deferred conversation, the performance review that keeps getting rescheduled, the person in the room that everyone has an opinion about and nobody addresses directly.

The decision exists, has been named, discussed, and quietly returned to the shelf. That indecision compounds.

THE FAMILIAR BULLY

He was a bit of a bully. Actually, he was a lot of a bully. (No, I am not changing that sentence, Grammarly)

The little snipes, the dodgy remarks particularly aimed at women and junior staff, and a habit that got considerably worse when there was alcohol involved. The executive team knew. They’d gone back and forth on it for longer than they’d admit, but he had the book of business, the relationships, the rolodex that took years to build. This was the insurance market. Wide boys have wide connections. The calculation, never spoken aloud, was “what do we risk by moving on him versus what do we risk by keeping him?”

So they kept him, and managed around him, and told themselves they were working on it.

Two analysts decided they’d had enough. One of them, when she handed in her resignation, told him directly that he was a complete arsehole and that he was the reason she was leaving. He told her to calm down, she told him to go forth and multiply (that always makes me laugh), and she made it plain to everyone within earshot that all the talk about values and culture was bat guano if someone like him could operate unchecked while the leadership team watched from a careful distance.

Something shifted that day.

The executive team decided they would finally go in, issue a formal caution, and make clear that things had to change. He was “of value” but he had to change.

He beat them to it, announced he was moving to a competitor, and, remarkably, two other staff members went with him.

The decision the leadership team had been avoiding for the better part of three years got made for them on his terms, on his timeline, and with his people. The cost wasn’t just the lost revenue, it was the culture that had formed in the meantime, shaped by what the organisation had silently permitted. The two analysts who left before him understood something the executive team was still catching up to. Inaction is a statement, even if it doesn’t feel like one when you’re inside it.

THE COST OF AVOIDANCE

Avoidance rarely looks like avoidance from the inside. To some, it looks like prudence. To others, it looks like timing, waiting for the right moment, the right evidence, the right conditions to act. It presents itself as strategy, as measured judgment, as respect for complexity.

What it actually is, most of the time, is the rational short-term choice.

In the case above, the maths made a kind of sense. Move on a high-performing, well-connected revenue generator? Absorb the operational disruption? Manage the relationship fallout? For what? To deal with behaviour, the market largely tolerates anyway. The calculation isn’t irrational, it’s just catastrophically short-sighted.

Leadership is messy, despite the binary memes you see on social media.

The cost of avoidance doesn’t stay flat, it accumulates interest. Every month the decision doesn’t get made, the organisation is paying in talent that quietly recalibrates what the culture actually means, in junior staff who learn what the values are really worth, and in the slow erosion of credibility that happens when what leadership says and what leadership does stop rhyming. By the time the executive team in that story were ready to act, the most capable people in the room had already drawn their conclusions.

The pattern is almost always the same. Identify, discuss, defer. Identify, discuss, defer. Until the window closes, usually because someone else closes it for you.

Naming the thing that’s in the room is not a courageous act, though it can feel like one. It’s a technical skill. It requires a clear read on what the decision actually is, not the version that’s easiest to table, but the one that the data, the behaviour, and the quiet consensus in the corridor are already pointing to. It requires someone willing to say, “We have already decided, we just haven’t said it out loud.”

In most organisations, that person needs permission, whether structural, cultural, or both. Which is why this isn’t just a question of individual leadership, it is a question of governance. The organisations that make decisions well have built this infrastructure through forums, policy, accountability, and language. They’ve made it easier to name the thing than to defer it.

If you’re sitting with a decision that’s been on and off the agenda for more than two cycles, it’s worth asking not whether to make it but why it keeps not getting made.

The answer to that question is usually where the quiet work is.

More on this in Friday’s essay exploring the psychology, the narrative cost, and what it actually takes to break the pattern for good.

Until next time, David

Hello hi, and welcome to the first issue of The Pulse.

Over the years, I have noticed that many decisions with wide-ranging consequences rarely fail because the right answer wasn’t available; they failed because of who was allowed to give it.

In almost every leadership environment, there is a force at work that no one names and almost everyone obeys. You’ve felt it, and you may have even been the leader who enforced it without knowing. You’re not sure what I am on about? Let me explain.

The product had been in development for fourteen months.

By the time it reached the strategy session, the team had run the analysis three times, pressure-tested the assumptions, and arrived at a clear recommendation to delay the launch by one quarter, fix the integration flaw, and protect the customer relationship they’d spent three years building.

The recommendation sat in a twelve-page deck, signed off by the product lead, the technical director, and the head of customer success. Then the CEO walked in.

He had been abroad for two weeks, closing a partnership deal, and he was energised by it. He believed momentum mattered more than perfection, and he built his reputation on moving fast and backing himself. He hadn’t read the deck. Within ten minutes of sitting down, he had reframed the entire conversation around the launch going ahead. Not through argument but through his lens of certainty, and the fact that everyone in the room understood, without being told, whose opinion would determine the outcome.

So the product was launched within the quarter. The integration flaw became a public incident six weeks later. Three enterprise clients issued formal complaints, and the customer success lead, the one who’d flagged it most clearly, resigned four months afterwards. Quietly, with a reference she’d clearly been preparing for some time.

The CEO acknowledged the error in a town hall some time later. He said they had moved too fast. He didn’t say why, and evidently didn’t know, or worse, didn’t care.

This is what is known as The HiPPO Effect

The name comes from nature, and the parallel is more apt than most people realise.

The hippopotamus is one of the most underestimated and most dangerous animals on the planet. It is responsible for more human deaths in Africa than lions, leopards, or crocodiles. Yet it is widely perceived as slow, docile and even comic. It doesn’t look threatening. It grazes, it yawns, and it wallows in the shallows, and then, without warning, it acts with a speed and force that nothing in its appearance prepares you for.

The HiPPO Effect in leadership works the same way. The Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. A tendency for groups to defer to the most senior voice in a room, regardless of who holds the most relevant knowledge, data, or expertise.

It isn’t about incompetent leaders or even bad decisions. It’s about a social gravitational pull that operates below the level of conscious choice. When the most powerful person in a room signals a preference, the group recalibrates. Dissenting views become privately held. The recommendation gets quietly walked back, and no one is quite sure how it happened, because nothing dramatic occurred. The HiPPO was just in the room.

I’ve seen what it feels like from the inside. You were assigned a task, and you have completed it thoroughly. Then someone more senior speaks, and something shifts. Your work is parked because something else takes priority. A new AI policy, not thought through. A vendor selection because it’s a friend. A communication piece that is reactionary and not inclusive

If you are the HiPPO, you’re rarely overruling people. You’re simply speaking, and the silence that follows reads, to you, like agreement. Even when it is not.

One question to carry into your next meeting

Before the most senior person in the room speaks —including if that person is you — ask yourself the following.

Who in this room has the most relevant knowledge, and have they been heard yet?

If the answer is no, the most important thing you can do isn’t share your view, but create the conditions for them to share theirs.

A final note.

Some of you have been reading my work for a long time and some of you are brand new here. The Pulse doesn’t make that distinction — it’s built for anyone thinking seriously about leadership, what it demands, what it costs, and what it makes possible. Wherever you are on that journey, this space is for you.

I’m glad you’re here.

Until next time, lead well.

David

If you’ve been following me for a while, either directly or on other platforms you may know my weekly newsletter as The Lounge.

It was a place to land at the beginning of the week (swidt) where I would share a few ideas worth chewing on about my own development journey on decision-making under pressure for leaders. Nothing that demanded too much, but enough to shift something in how you were thinking.

That’s not changing, but the name is.

From this Tuesday, it arrives as The Pulse, here on Substack, and I want to tell you why that word feels right.

The Lounge was built for a different moment. It was warm, it was social, it had a particular energy, but the work has sharpened since then. The conversations I’m having with senior leaders, social entrepreneurs, and public sector figures navigating real change, be they cultural, technical, financial or political, they’re not lounge conversations. There’s urgency in them. There’s a beat.

That’s what The Pulse is trying to honour.

What to expect

Every Tuesday, I will share something worth carrying into your week. It won’t be long, but it will be intentional. A signal rather than a stream. One idea, one provocation, one thing you might not have considered before your first meeting of the day.

No noise, no volume, just the thinking that earns its place in your inbox.

Subscribe now

If you’re new here

The Pulse is the free weekly layer of The Quiet Work — a publication on decision intelligence for senior leaders. Subscribe and it lands every Tuesday. When you’re ready to go deeper, the paid tier is waiting.

For now though, welcome to The Pulse. Let’s get to work.

David