What AI is Actually Changing (It’s Not What You Think)
by Tony Quinlan on Jan 29, 2026 10:00:01 AM
I’m going to start with two admissions. Firstly, I can’t remember my partner’s mobile number. Not perhaps the most drastic admission - but I grew up with landlines, knowing necessary numbers off the top of the hat. Now, I can’t make it stick the same way. This isn’t about getting olde …
How People Think We Got Here
by Tony Quinlan on Jan 22, 2026 10:00:01 AM
“Well we know where we’re going, but we don’t know where we’ve been.”
The Problem With Leaders As Heroes
by Tony Quinlan on Dec 5, 2025 11:30:00 AM
We've built entire mythologies around heroic leadership. The visionary founder who saw what others couldn't. The turnaround specialist who saved the dying company. The innovative CEO who disrupted an entire industry. (Picture them in your mind for a moment. Chances are, most of them a …
When Smart People Realise They've Been Using Hammers on Everything
by Tony Quinlan on Oct 6, 2025 12:00:00 PM
The moment I remember most clearly happened on day two of a workshop in Silicon Valley. An engineering director - let's call him David - suddenly stopped mid-conversation and said, "Oh. Oh, we've been treating our culture change like a technical problem, haven't we?"
Stop Telling Stories, Start Sharing Examples
by Tony Quinlan on Sep 26, 2025 10:30:00 AM
I was facilitating a leadership retreat last month when someone asked me to talk about narrative and storytelling. I hadn't touched this topic in depth in a while (although it's where I started my journey as Narrate, over 25 years ago), but I found myself improvising a two-hour sessio …
Culture Isn't Your Values - It's Your Landscape
by Tony Quinlan on Aug 28, 2025 10:30:00 AM
Last week, I was walking through the hills with a group of executives on a corporate retreat. We'd stopped at the top of a valley, looking across to a church on the opposite hillside, when one of them asked about changing their company culture.
From Chaos To Clarity: Why Your Team Isn't As Lost As You Think
by Tony Quinlan on Aug 22, 2025 12:00:00 PM
The moment I remember most clearly happened during a workshop with a Silicon Valley team last month. Twenty minutes into our session, the project lead looked up from the whiteboard and said, "Wait, there's actually nothing here that's truly chaotic."
When Three Teams Became One (And Actually Meant It)
by Tony Quinlan on Aug 20, 2025 10:30:00 AM
Most team mergers try to eliminate differences and create alignment. We discovered the opposite approach worked better - embracing those differences and letting them become strategic advantages. Here's how that played out with a Unilever R&D team.
Understanding Company Culture As A Living System
by Tony Quinlan on Jul 31, 2025 12:30:00 PM
You know that moment when you realise that your carefully planned culture initiative is being quietly undermined by the very people it's meant to help? Or when you see teams somehow pulling together brilliantly during a crisis, despite all your formal processes saying they shouldn't b …
Navigating Organisational Complexity: When Small Changes Create Profound Shifts
by Tony Quinlan on Jul 30, 2025 12:30:00 PM
You know those moments when everything at work feels impossibly tangled? When a straightforward project somehow spirals into a complex web of unexpected challenges, interdependencies, and unintended consequences? If you've experienced the frustration of watching a simple change ripple …