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It’s 100 99 days to go until the The UnConvention, a carefully curated event, hosted by Christian Hunt and myself, to be held in the inspiring St James Church, Clerkenwell on 12th November 2026. To date we have been a little cheeky; whetting appetites, enthusing a prospective audience and selling tickets on trust. Please can I attend? But we appreciate that many of you will need to take time away from your compelling offices, urgent deadlines and online training, and to secur

In the Avengers: Infinity War “The Blip” (also known as the Decimation or the Snap) began when Thanos exterminated half of all living things in the universe, chosen at random, with a snap of his fingers. Perhaps this catastrophe has informed the global outrage surrounding an English club cricket cheating scandal, where a fielder clicked his fingers to mimic a nick of bat on ball that led to an imaginary catch. Piers Morgan has declared “Clicky Ponting” the biggest cheat in cr

What happens when two people who spend their careers thinking about human behaviour meet in a London pub and start complaining about conferences? Apparently, they decide to organise one. If you share in their angst, are curious or want to understand what they are doing about it, then tune into this discussion on the Human Risk Podcast, where myself and Christian Hunt discuss what led us to the Unconvention. ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/efNRnnXG Along the way we discuss Silicon

I’m studying how the way we all think about behaviour and culture itself has an important impact on how organizations seek to understand & address behaviour and culture. Sounds obvious, eh? But there is a unique part of this onion which we need to unpeel. And I need your help. There is a circular dynamic in how our behaviour impacts the analysis of our behaviour. This can either unlock or impede progress. A distinctive trait that is not shared with other areas of corporat

A week is a long time in politics (as we are about to find out). It is also a very long time in events that cover human behaviour and organizational culture. Last week I was stuck in a cave looking at the shadows (see prior blog). This week I was on the sun enlightened top floor, engaging with those who bring humility, curiosity and academic rigor to their work. The 6th Behavioural Transformation & KCL / LSE Aldwych Behavioural Collaboration (ABC) took place alongside the Ana

Last week I attended the 11th Annual Culture and Conduct Summit in Financial Services, hosted by City and Financial Global. https://www.cityandfinancialglobal.com/the-11th-annual-culture-and-conduct-in-financial-services-summit/home With it came the faint damp smell of something that has been left in the cupboard for too long or had passed its sell-by date. An old duffle coat or aged cheese. Not that conduct and culture in Financial Services shouldn’t still be a top priority

Why do we talk about Risk & Resilience, Compliance & Conduct, or Performance & People without really getting under the skin of human behaviour? On 𝟭𝟮𝘁𝗵 𝗡𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲, join us for 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗻𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. A one-day event in an unconventional venue in Central London for people working in and around financial services. By bringing together unconventional thinkers from inside and outside the industry, we want to ask better questions about culture, conduct,

This article combines reflections on an investor conference, how senior management talk about culture and a live experiment to capture the meaty content, mince it though a Gen AI platform and see what tasty sausages or off-putting offal pop out the other end. Quick Culture Question On Tuesday (28th April 2026) morning I wrote a quick Linkedin post flagging that Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) was hosting its 2026 Investment Conference later that day, with the theme “

If you are Mexican, you may be preparing to celebrate Día del Cartero, in honour of your mail delivery heroes. Or in the USA readying for either National Chicken Soup for the Soul Day, or Pizza with the Works (except Anchovies) Day. But if you are in the UK and able to travel to London it’s time for a re-think. Block out that Thursday and trust your instinct. The origin story was a meeting in the Jampot (Jamaica Wine House) on St Michael's Alley in the City, one dank Janua

Last night I woke up at 3am. Jet lag and Szechwan chilli combining to ill effect. And in the hour before sleep’s welcome re-embrace I had a revelation, as I was thinking about Meta Cognition. Which (I think) means I was thinking about people thinking about thinking. Now re-framed as Meta Cognition (MC) squared. If so, and if we allocate E as representing my Epiphany, then we arrive at E=MC2 - which for some reason resonates. My insight was this. As with Meta Cognition, so it

Exactly 15 years ago, at 1.50pm on Friday 11th March 2011, I was on the Hong Kong trading floor, lunch had finished and my thoughts were already turning towards beers after work and the coming weekend. Suddenly there was a commotion, as urgent messages started coming through on the squawk boxes and telephones. The Tokyo office was violently shaking in an earthquake. Whilst tremors were not unusual this one was sufficiently alarming for our Japan based staff to alert Head Offi

On November 17th 2025, Starling Insights launched a new Deeper Dive report, “Supervisors on Supervision” following a global stock-take exercise that received input from many senior financial sector supervisors worldwide. The study collected emerging views regarding reform efforts aimed at culture, risk governance and supervision. The report’s release as a Public Exposure Draft was intended to solicit feedback from a variety of industry stakeholders to inform a Final Report, d

Was it a coincidence!? I think not. No sooner did I return from an evening’s discussion at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) on the importance of narrative, in policy, politics and life, than I turn on the radio and hear Matthew Syed discussing the power of story telling. An echo of the night before, the morning after. Is it written in the stars? Has someone scripted a tale about tales, in which I am an unwitting narrator, hero or villain? A

I spent last week in Edinburgh and it has taken me the weekend to digest the lessons learned and unlearned. How to make sense of a trip where I rubbed the brass foot of David Hume on the Royal Mile for luck. Holding the toe of a Scottish Enlightenment thinker, famed for his rejection of religion and superstition in favour of rationality and reason, seems perverse. But I was giving a presentation that day at the Library of Mistakes and divine inspiration from the human philos

40 years ago today, on the 28 th January 1986, at 11:39:13 a.m. EST the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds into its launch. The seven crew members aboard were killed, and the disaster led to a 32 month halt in the Space Shuttle program. The painful details are now well known. The proximate cause of the catastrophe was the failure of O-ring seals in a solid rocket booster. Freezing temperatures on the morning of the launch had stiffened the rubber O-rings, redu

I am enjoying the excellent Tim Harford* and his latest episodes of “More or Less” (see links below), with a focus this week on The Stats of the Nation. On Wednesday he covered Sex, Drugs, (Crime) and Empty Homes. This covered the rather startling revelation that according to Police data (for England and Wales) crime overall has increased 25% over a 10 year period, with violent offences up 85%. But we should celebrate. As, hidden within these concerning metrics is good news;

1) Boxes As we move into 2026, I am looking forward to reading in more detail on how UK Company Boards have been not only been “assessing and monitoring” their culture, but also evaluating how the desired culture has been “embedded” across the organization. For those who have been slumbering and missed it (shame on you) revisions to the UK Corporate Governance Code in 2024 included enhanced culture requirements, re-enforcing it as a core component of corporate governance[

Last night, as dusk descended over Bodmin Moor, I watched one of natures most spectacular phenomena; a mumuration of starlings. Tens of thousands of birds flying together in (seemingly) synchronised, ever-shifting patterns. Scientists have long studied the spectacle, to try and understand both the causes of the behaviour and the flock’s mesmerising coordination. In the 1930s, ornithologist Edmund Selous proposed that starlings might possess telepathic abilities. By the 1980s

In a speech on 5th November the UK FCA let off a few fireworks, encouraging Chief Risk Officers to take more risks. https://www.fca.org.uk/news/speeches/rebalancing-risk-growth-role-chief-risk-officer And I quote: “ 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘧𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘴𝘧𝘰𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘳𝘶𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘮. 𝘐𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘢 𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 –...

It is not often I get to make a presentation during an event book-ended by the excellent Dame Margaret Hodge and Flora Page KC. So I had to make the most of my short slot at the ICAEW's Global Ethics Day event, to grab attention in the mid afternoon lull. https://www.icaew.com/insights/viewpoints-on-the-news/2025/nov-2025/applying-the-building-blocks-of-ethical-culture Upon being challenged in my intro, (unsurprisingly) no-one in the audience volunteered to being less e