On Management and self-knowledge
When I was promoted in my early 20s to run the news team at Oxfam a wise and empathetic senior manager came over to congratulate me. “This is excellent,” he said. “Now you can enable others to thrive”.
I remember feeling slightly miffed, and thinking “but I don’t want to allow others to thrive; I want to be the one in the spotlight, excelling, getting the headlines, being congratulated.”
I guess that was the beginning of my management and leadership journey. Because over twenty years on, I now totally understand what my wise colleague meant.
On motherhood and work
Motherhood is at once a universal and at the same time a deeply individual and personal experience. No one mother-child relationship is the same as another. There are many routes to conception, as many birth stories as there are births, and the experience will challenge and change women and those around them in myriad different ways.
For some, becoming a mother will feel like the realisation of a destiny, a vocation; for others it will be harder and more undoing than they ever imagined.
On starting again
I have done it again. / One year in every ten / I manage it——
Changing jobs is hard. A watershed moment, which entails leaving behind you an established identity, the comfort of routine and a defined status, the reassurance of knowing what you’re doing…
It is also a liberation. The opening up again of possibility. The rephrasing of questions you’ve asked yourself before, but for which now the answers might be different. A chance to build on what you’ve learned and subtly - or dramatically - change tack.
On Employee Ownership
In September 2021 I took a call from a company interested in buying the communications agency I had founded and was running. I was just back from maternity leave with my second child and such a transaction was far from my mind. We didn’t move forward – the match wasn’t right, and nor was the timing. But it got me thinking: did I want to sell the business, and if so, who to? How long did I want to stay on as CEO?
Fast forward a year or so, and I started working with a coach, Simon North, who introduced me to the concept of Employee Ownership Trusts. I was immediately excited by the prospect of passing on the business to the employees, while ensuring – as far as possible – that it would continue to work for the sorts of organisations and on the sorts of issues that had inspired its creation.
On leaving di:ga – or the importance of good communication
NB: This blog is based on the speech I delivered at my leaving do from di:ga Strategy and Communications, in August 2025
I didn’t mean to start a company. I didn’t have a vision or a 10-year plan. I certainly didn’t expect to start something that in time I would be able to pass on to others. In that sense, I guess you could call me an accidental entrepreneur.
What I did know was that I believed in the power of good communication to drive change. To persuade, convince, inspire, and challenge. I still believe in this, although there are times when it feels like we are shouting into the storm.
di:ga is the imperative form of ‘to speak’ in Spanish. A Spaniard will say – digame – tell me. I chose the name when I set up the company because I liked the simplicity of it: the power of speech, the imperative to say what matters.
On leadership and responsibility
A former colleague asked me for my thoughts on leadership and building resilient teams. What follows is a version of the email I sent him in response.
My buzz word for high-performing teams is responsibility. What responsibility do we have towards people we employ? What do we owe our employees / colleagues / clients / employer? How can we genuinely and honestly take responsibility for our own actions and the impact they have - on our immediate environment, society, the world?
At di:ga, the company I set up and ran for 14 years, we treated everyone like adults and expected them to behave this way. We gave people freedom and flexibility but asked them to take responsibility for the things they were tasked with - and for their contribution to the performance and wellbeing of the whole team.
We didn't micromanage, or clock-watch. Of course, we provided support - whether that was training, advice, friendship, coaching, decent benefits and leave policies, or honest feedback. But we did so based on the belief that ultimately everyone is responsible for themselves and how they show up, and that it is a privilege to work on issues you care about, with talented and motivated colleagues, for quality clients.