Akkadium

19/08/2026

Deep into preparations for the forthcoming Akkadium Executive Programme in Intercultural Leadership. Launching 6 October!

https://akkadium.com/executive-programme-in-intercultural-leadership/

13/08/2026

What if better decision-making begins long before the decision itself?

I recently came across a fascinating Harvard Business Review article about how elite sports coaches make decisions under pressure.

One thing particularly struck me. The best coaches invest enormous amounts of time learning to observe their people.

They notice subtle changes, pay attention to behaviour and build a richer understanding of the human landscape they operate in, long before critical moments arise.

There’s something quite anthropological about that.

But anthropology also encourages us to go further, because behaviour rarely explains itself. What we can observe is only part of the landscape.

Context, culture, history, relationships and the wider worlds people inhabit can radically change what that behaviour means.

That's what I explore in this short video.

And it's also at the heart of my next Akkadium Executive Briefing: 'The Context Problem', on 25 August, where we'll explore how leaders can get better at reading human systems before deciding how to act.

If you'd like to join me, I'll put the registration details in the comments, along with the full Insight that inspired this video.

07/08/2026

A few years ago, I led a piece of work I was genuinely proud of. It succeeded by every measure I was tracking at the time.

What I didn't know until weeks later was that someone I respected had been quietly hurt by it.

Not because the outcome was wrong. Because I'd missed something about what the work meant to them, and to a history I knew nothing about.

I'd been so focused on getting it right that I never thought to ask what "right" might look like from where they were standing.

That experience has stayed with me. Not as a failure exactly — more as a gap I didn't know was there until it was too late to close it gently.

I've been writing about this lately: the idea that before we can make good judgements, we first have to develop the perception to see what's actually in front of us.

Behaviour rarely explains itself.

It usually just invites us to look more carefully.

I wrote about this — including that story — in my latest piece.

What if better leadership decisions begin not with better judgement, but with learning to see more? An anthropological perspective on attention, context and the hidden maps that shape how leaders navigate complexity.

31/07/2026

One of the most common mistakes I see in leadership is assuming that behaviour explains itself.

It doesn't.

Behaviour is what we can observe, but context is what gives it meaning. Understanding that context helps us recognise the conditions from which behaviour emerges, giving us a better chance of nurturing meaningful, sustained culture change.

This short clip is taken from this week's inaugural Akkadium Executive Briefing on The Context Problem, where I explore why so many well-intentioned leadership decisions fail when the human system underneath is misread.

23/07/2026

Artificial intelligence is changing more than technology.

It's changing the way human value is constructed.

History suggests this happens every time a previously scarce resource becomes abundant.

The question is whether we're paying attention to what comes next.

This short video explores one assumption I think leadership needs to challenge before we rush to define the "human advantage" in the age of AI.

If this raises questions for you, I'll be exploring these ideas in more depth during my free Executive Briefing webinar next week. I'd love you to join!

Registration link in the comments.

12/07/2026

12/07/2026

"Put yourself in their shoes."

It may be one of the most well-intentioned pieces of advice in leadership.

Anthropology suggests it may also be one of the easiest ways to misunderstand another person's experience.

Why?

Because even when we imagine ourselves in someone else's situation, we carry our own assumptions, values, histories and conditioning with us.

In this video, I explore an alternative approach to empathy — not simply as an emotion or intention, but as a disciplined practice of attention.

What practices help you distinguish observation from interpretation in your own leadership?

23/06/2026

Outdated cultural competency checklists are costing global organisations millions in failed transformations and misaligned integrations.

In our latest insight briefing, Akkadium explores the strategic discipline of ethnographic leadership. Discover why forward-thinking executives are moving past surface-level stereotypes to map the informal power structures, tacit rules, and hidden human systems that actually dictate business outcomes.

Read the full briefing: https://akkadium.com/insights/the-ethnographic-executive-why-the-best-leaders-learn-to-read-human-systems-not-cultural-stereotypes/

11/02/2026

In this episode Zeinab Badawi travels to the country of her birth and the very region of her forefathers and mothers: northern Sudan where she sheds light o...