Build - weekly brain food for founders

Hey there, I'm a big believer in the power of collabs in helping founders to build businesses. That's why throughout July, August and September I'm welcoming a series of guest authors to the Build Summer Series 2025. Thayer Prime is a tech strategist, leadership advisor and founder of consultancy Team Prime. Her article is a fascinating dive into how the emergence of AI is changing senior recruitment in growth businesses. best regards,-sw Build #65 - Rethinking senior recruitment in an...

Hey there, I'm a big believer in the power of collabs in helping founders to build businesses. That's why throughout July, August and September I'm welcoming a series of guest authors to the Build Summer Series 2025. Thayer Prime is a tech strategist, leadership advisor and founder of consultancy Team Prime. Her article is a fascinating dive into how the emergence of AI is changing senior recruitment in growth businesses. best regards,-sw Build #65 - Rethinking senior recruitment in an...

Build #64 - Organisational design that actually works Hey, I spend a lot of time working on organisational design projects for clients. To be honest there are times I end up waking up at 4am with my mind racing through permutations of structures and roles. And I've realised that all too often founders think about structure backwards. As their businesses scale they build elaborate hierarchies to flatter egos. They create departments based on traditional assumptions rooted in their early...

Build #63 - Rewriting leadership, authority and valuing dissent Hey, It’s been a busy couple of weeks in my inbox so I was spoilt for choice while selecting the most useful articles for founders who are scaling their businesses. I settled on these three: 1. Leadership, Rewritten A fresh series of articles from Dr Richard Claydon that challenges many of the superficial notions of what leadership now means. As Richard puts it “maybe you’ve simply stopped believing that leadership - as currently...

Build #62 - Designing for deeper work Hey there, I’ve been thinking a lot about deep work recently. It’s something that’s vital for people in scaling businesses to have space to do. The cognitive costs of context switching and lack of uninterrupted thinking time can really affect productivity, creativity and strategic thinking. But as businesses scale rapidly, preserving the focused attention and deep work capabilities of teams against increasing communication overhead and distractions...

Build #61 - Aiming small, founder-led growth, life and work Hey there, It’s Simon here with today’s quick issue of Build - my newsletter read by more than 1,400 founders taking an intentional approach to growing their businesses. But before we launch into the three most interesting things I’ve seen recently, I’m excited to share something new with you. In July and August this year, the Build Summer Series is going to be featuring guest authors. I’m really excited about the different...

Build #60 - Alleviating decision-making load for founders Hey there, This week in Build I’m looking at a favourite topic of mine: decision-making. Most of the founders I work with are grappling with the challenge of shifting to a wider group of people making decisions. They’re doing this because they typically face a relentless onslaught of decisions every single day. Constant decision-making leads to decision fatigue. And they recognise that to be able to grow their business they need to...

Build #59 - Resistance to change, busy work and a team conflict hack Hola! Once again Wednesday is with us, so I bring you the three most interesting things to cross my path this week: 1. Why is change hard? Steven Schlafman’s essay takes a deep dive into change and why humans find it hard. He walks us through models of change, some flaws in the model thinking and some reflections on where the root of resistance to change might be found. My take: A good deal of leadership is about setting the...

Build #58 - Words matter Hey there, You might know I became an ICF qualified coach last year. I was surprised me that a lot of the coaching course (and homework) was about self-reflection. Learning coaching was as much about me my coaching. It meant time spent thinking about me: the ways I listen. How I react. The words I use. The non-verbal cues I give. I learnt that my words have a big influence on the mental models of those around me. And doing that hard work has definitely made me more...