What I Know Now: The Book
Governance theory tells you what a board should do, and that matters. But it doesn’t tell you how.
This book is the how, worked out the hard way over 35 years at board level. Ten chapters, each built around a mistake I made or watched someone else make, what I learned, and what I’d do differently now.
There’s no theory in it I haven’t lived. Every chapter ends with a single question. Answer it for yourself and you’ll know which parts of this apply to you.
Why I wrote it
I’m 73. I still sit on boards. And most of what I know I had to learn the hard way.
That’s why I wrote What I Know Now. Not a textbook, and not another theory of leadership. A short, practical book drawn from what happened. It’s for people carrying responsibility now, who shouldn’t have to learn every lesson slowly when someone else already has.
I started writing down what would have helped most if I’d known it at the start of my board career. What makes a board effective. Why leadership is almost entirely about behaviour. What culture is in practice. How strategies collapse without anyone admitting it. And why succession, growth and the difficult conversations get left until they become crises.
I didn’t write it to build a reputation or add something to my CV. I wrote it because there is no good reason for the next generation of business leaders to repeat mistakes that have already been made and learned from.
Thirty-five years of notes, stories and plain opinions from someone who has been through the maze. I’ve tried to make every page worth your time.
What’s in it
Chapter One – Boards Should Make Things Better
Purpose, and why boards fail.
Most boards mean well. Few make as much difference as they could. What separates them isn’t governance knowledge but whether the board makes decisions and then makes sure they’re followed through. This chapter is about the difference between a board that’s correct and one that works.
Chapter Two – Leadership Is Behaviour
How you act, communicate, and set the tone.
Your team watches everything you do and draws conclusions from all of it. This chapter is about the distance between what you intend and what people experience, and why the first place to look when something goes wrong is yourself.
Chapter Three – Culture: What You Tolerate, You Get
What culture means and what it costs when you ignore it.
Culture isn’t the values on the wall. It’s whether people tell the truth early or hide it late, whether standards apply to high performers too, and whether speaking up is safe. This chapter covers what builds it, what destroys it, and the difficult individual most leaders leave too long.
Chapter Four – What Good Looks Like
High-performing boards in practice.
Good boards feel different. Decisions get made, actions get done, and people leave with more energy than they arrived with. Includes a scoring tool you can use with your own board once a year.
Chapter Five – People Are The Work
Managing people, politics, and hard calls.
The right instinct is to develop people first. But some are in the wrong role, and keeping them there helps nobody. This chapter covers the calls leaders delay: the founder’s early team, the sabotage nobody names, and the conversation you keep finding reasons to avoid.
Chapter Six – Strategy Needs Energy
Roadmaps, strategy sessions, and three not thirty.
Strategy needs an open mind and full energy, not whatever is left in the tank after two hours of monthly reports. This chapter covers what makes a strategy session work, why implementation fails, and the discipline that changed everything: three things get done, thirty don’t.
Chapter Seven – Growing Beyond Yourself
Scaling leadership at every stage of your career.
At some point every leader has to grow or the business stalls. Most people plan their finances obsessively and their own development barely at all. This chapter is about the moment hairline cracks become fault lines, and what to do before that rather than after.
Chapter Eight – The Exit You Haven’t Planned For
M&A, exits, earn-outs, and the distraction nobody warns you about.
The hard part of a deal is rarely the valuation or the legal work. It’s the things you haven’t prepared for: the workload, the isolation, and what happens to the business while all of that is consuming you. This chapter covers the earn-out trap, succession started too late, and the vacuum after a deal that fills with rumour while nobody has resolved who does what.
Chapter Nine – Family Businesses
Good intentions. The conversations that don’t happen.
Family businesses have the same issues as any other SME, but the emotional stakes are higher because the relationships are permanent. The ones that work best have the conversations that are hardest to start. The ones that don’t end up with siblings who won’t meet at Christmas.
Chapter Ten – Reputation
What people say when you’re not in the room.
Reputation is built slowly and lost quickly, and most leaders watch the external version while the internal one decides everything else. This chapter is about what your team says about you when you’re not there, and why that matters more than anything you put on a website.
Every penny I receive from the book goes to Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice. 