Thinking on leadership, partnerships and development
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The 7-Year Itch: Why leaders are running out of runway
[For previous subscribers to ‘DefinitelyMaybe’ my posts now live here at Coracle Consulting. Thanks for coming along!] Speaking of 7-year itches, yesterday marked seven years to the day that I set up Coracle Consulting. Frankly, I’m delighted, if not a tad shocked, to still be afloat as a small business. It’s been a great ride… Read more
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Return of the Jedi (Training)
Last Friday, I hobbled into a training room in Saigon on crutches, balanced my knee on a chair pirate-style, and spent the morning facilitating a ‘JEDI’ workshop for EXO Travel’s regional HR team. I’ve personally used EXO Travel for the past fifteen years, and would commend them to anyone seeking travel and ticketing support across… Read more
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From Sweatshop Scandals to System Change: The Long Arc of the Garment Industry
In May 2013, I posted the above photograph on this blog. It was taken by photographer Taslima Akhter, at the site of the Rana Plaza building collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Two garment workers, unnamed and unidentifiable, found in a final embrace, buried together in the rubble of a factory that should never have been standing… Read more
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The Pendulum Effect in Corporate Culture
Trends have a habit of swinging like pendulums. First something is ignored, then it becomes important, then it becomes very important. Eventually it becomes so important that everyone talks about it endlessly – until the backlash arrives and people pretend they were never quite that enthusiastic about it in the first place. Corporate Social Responsibility… Read more
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The Butterfly and the Hurricane
I’ve been listening to The Rest Is History lately and, in particular, snippets from various episodes discussing the First World War. Aside from the irony that it’s taken me thirty-two years since leaving school – and leaving behind two underwhelming history teachers in my wake – to finally get to grips with how WWI was… Read more
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Smarter Machines, Slower Minds?
I woke up this morning to news of Nvidia’s latest impressive stock surge – yet again confounding its critics and the doom-mongers convinced the AI bubble is moments from bursting. It doesn’t surprise me. AI’s galloping pace is unmistakable, and its technologies are now running wild through the day-to-day interactions and transactions of businesses and… Read more
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Your Application Has Been Unsuccessful
I’ve been remiss posting on DefinitelyMaybe, having thrown my efforts into a weekly Substack instead – a decision that has yet to yield fame, fortune, or even a single sponsorship from a running shoe company. In the meantime, no one’s mentioned my absence here, which I choose to interpret as proof that after twelve years… Read more
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Too Distracted Scrolling to Notice We’re Sinking
In 2025, the world feels perpetually distracted. Elections, wars, AI, celebrity scandals — global attention ricochets between urgency and noise. Today it’s one crisis, tomorrow another. And we all scroll on. And yet, a slower, more existential threat escalates beneath it all: climate change. Especially in Southeast Asia, the impacts are already reshaping daily life.… Read more
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What I’ve been writing about
international development business CARE International Collaboration Cross-sector partnerships CSR gender equality leadership development partnerships humanitarian NGO social impact capacity building consulting strategy