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SDR is governance, with a sustainability label.
The FCA’s Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (”SDR”) regime has brought rigour to an area which was too loose for too long. But read the FCA’s rules and guidance and a bigger picture emerges. SDR is a detailed articulation of the FCA’s…
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Worry About Creativity, Not Compliance.
Financial services aren’t some state of nature, to which we’ve decided to apply a few harm-limiting commandments (”thou shalt not trade on thy neighbour’s inside information”). It’s a constructed environment. Regulation is more like a board game, where the rules…
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Focusing on Progress.
Change is always happening. It is either happening to you, or it is something you take charge of. Most organisations have plenty of ideas, even plenty of ambition. What they lack is focus. Plans drift, priorities blur, and the urgent…
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Empowering Governance.
Governance shouldn’t slow you down; it should give you the confidence to go further and faster. To many, governance sounds like process and paperwork. In practice, it’s what turns uncertainty into conviction, and conviction into action. When investors, regulators and…
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Mastering Complexity.
Complexity can’t be beaten, but it can be mastered. The organisations that thrive aren’t those that try to make the world seem simpler, they’re the ones that make sense of the world as it is, and move decisively within it.
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Climate & Ecology Thoughts: “Art in the Time of Ecological Disruption” 2021.
The role of art in being a vector for change in our relationship to nature, landscape and the environment, for offering opportunities for thinking, being and becoming otherwise.
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Climate & Ecology Thoughts: “Supercharge Me, Net Zero Faster” 2022.
Supercharge Me is ambitious and pragmatic, it urges specific actions and is optimistic about achieving them. Unfortunately, it was written for a different age.
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Strategy is a Story About Mission.
Communicating a strategy isn’t a newscast, it’s a rallying cry. Sharing the strategy should be aimed at reinforcing the culture.
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Climate & Ecology Thoughts: “Hyperobjects” 2013.
Hyperobjects, by Timothy Morton, gives us a powerful way to reimagine some of our most pressing problems, especially global warming and our relationship with nature.
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Funding UK Climate Tech: Problems and Solutions.
There’s plenty of capital and there are plenty of projects but the pipeline between the two is inefficient and ineffective; the plumbing’s broken.
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A Few Thoughts & Things I’ve Found.
The first of an occasional email newsletter I’m sending round to share some thoughts and things I’ve happened across. I hope you find something of interest in here.
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Regulation: Balancing Restraint & Progress.
“If you think regulation isn’t needed, you’re the reason it’s needed.” There are two principal functions of regulation – policing sin, and shifting markets to better serve society – but both can be painful, imperfect and are evermore complex.
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The Customer’s Journey (not yours!)
The customer journey isn’t that well-crafted pathway we create; that’s our journey. Let’s find the customer’s.
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A Roadmap for Start-Ups, Projects, Products & Pivots.
A comprehensive road map to guide you through key stages of an entrepreneurial journey to market.
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“Infinite Interns”, Artificial Intelligence for Folk Like Us.
With the rise of large language models, what are the day-to-day opportunities and limitations of our AI-assisted present?
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How Exciting Are CBAMs?!
The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (”CBAM”) is a wildly underrated policy instrument, which not only addresses carbon leakage, but also reproduces itself, driving realistic carbon pricing, on a global scale.
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Scaling a Fractional Investment Platform.
Overcoming structural, commercial problems in launching a fractional investment platform.
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Blockchain in the Carbon Markets: Opportunities and Risks.
How blockchain, crypto and DeFi could add value to the voluntary carbon markets.
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M&A Trends: UK Fund Admin
If you’re interested in M&A trends among smaller (sub $500m AUM) UK fund administrators… welcome!
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Being Wilfully Inefficient Is Gloriously Human.
Map the process, automate what you can, create workflows for the rest, and augment them with machine learning.
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What the #@$% is Going On?!
Let’s build some dashboards, and stop our business blowing up. The other option isn’t leadership, it’s flying blind.
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In Praise of Persistent Competence.
Get the plan right and push it forward week after week (insight and innovation are neither necessary, nor sufficient).
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Where’s The What?
Well, that’s what you do… it’s every decision you take. But we can still make better decisions.
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Let’s Make Better Decisions.
We can enjoy the simplified narrative of the visionary leader, but we‘d learn more from the nuanced tale of how they built a decision-making powerhouse.
