The Prescription - In Conversation

What does it actually take to build a thriving culture, rather than just talk about high performance or psychological safety?

In this episode of The Prescription, I’m joined by Ivan Hollingsworth to explore why so many organisations default to league tables, targets and performance measures, even when they say they care about culture.

We talk about why culture is difficult to “fix”, why context matters, the role of kindness and trust, and why the best leaders and coaches can challenge people hard while still making it clear that they care.

Ivan also reflects on his own move from pharma into consultancy, the self-doubt that came with it, and how his personal experiences have shaped the work he now does around psychological safety, leadership and high-performing teams.

A practical conversation about leadership, culture, trust and creating the conditions for people to do their best work.

I hope you enjoy

In this episode of The Prescription: In Conversation, I speak with Dougal Beard about consulting, transformation, decision-making and the human work of making complex things manageable.

We talk about why strategy is often easier than execution, how good change management helps people move from the old world to the new one, and why influence without authority depends less on clever arguments and more on trust, clarity and making it easy for people to say yes.

A conversation about judgement, structure, change, and what it really takes to get things done inside complex organisations.

Why do some people have more impact than others, even when they're equally knowledgeable?

I'm uploading my recent articles as 'audio essays' (definitely not a podcast...)

In this first short essay in my Professional Effectiveness series, I discuss why communication clarity sits is one of the most important aspects to develop when wanting to become more effective

Using an unlikely lesson from Van Halen's (Hi kids....) backstage demand for brown M&Ms to be removed, I look at the difference between providing information and creating understanding.

Along the way, I reflect on clinical practice, committee papers, "golden emails", and why many professionals unintentionally or intentionally communicate in ways that protect themselves rather than help others do the right thing.

If people can't understand your thinking, they can't act on your expertise.

This is the first of four essays exploring professional effectiveness:
• Communication Clarity
• Influence
• Decision-Making Under Uncertainty
• Technical Execution

I hope you enjoy it, please leave a comment, tell a friend and subscribe to the podcast and to The Prescription

This episode is about risk, decision making, and what actually drives people once money stops being the goal.

I’m joined by Ben Perrins, who describes himself not as an entrepreneur, but as a “wingman” to them. He’s spent his career working alongside founders, helping scale businesses, make decisions under pressure, and navigate uncertainty.

We talk about the decisions that took him from corporate life into consulting, the moment he took a significant pay cut to back himself, and what it really cost to build something that eventually delivered an eight-figure exit.

But the most interesting part of this conversation isn’t the story. It’s how decisions get made, and his observations on the NHS

In Ben’s world, decisions are fast, individual, and based on trade-offs. In mine, they’re made through committees, influence, and shared accountability. That opens up a much bigger question about how we think about risk, certainty, and control in complex systems.

We also get into what happens when you reach the thing you thought you were aiming for, and why meaning often replaces money as the real driver over time.

If you work in the NHS, or any complex organisation, there’s something here about how you approach decisions, how you handle uncertainty, and what you actually want from your work.