June 2026

Ask people what makes organisational change hard and most describe the workload. The evidence points elsewhere. In 2016 a UCL team gave volunteers a game where turning over the wrong rock meant an electric shock, tracking their stress as the odds shifted. Stress didn't peak when a shock was certain. It peaked at fifty-fifty. Knowing

Somewhere on the second day of a five-day mountain bike ride across the Welsh hills, a familiar decision presents itself. A climb rears up, loose and steep. You can dismount and push, or you can drop a gear, settle your breathing, and ride it. The rider who consistently chooses to ride is not, it turns

When people talk about fatigue, they reach for the language of energy: batteries draining, tanks running dry, people "running on empty." The metaphor feels intuitive, and it has shaped a generation of corporate responses such as resilience programmes, recharge days, sleep hygiene workshops. All well-intentioned and of them aimed at the wrong problem. Fatigue, it

I watched my colleague manically walking round the hotel, staring at his watch until he had closed the ring on his apple watch thus achieving his activity target for the day. I bet you've seen something similar? 6 months later, we were sat in a bar and the motivation to close rings on his apple

You know the story, there’s a disagreement about workload, or someone is given a clumsy piece of feedback, or a rota change is delivered without explanation. Within days, instead of a conversation with the line manager, there is a formal grievance in HR's inbox. Not long after, a data subject access request lands: every email,