Learning & development
Why training doesn't stick, and the transfer problem no budget ever covers
Companies will spend their way to roughly 800 billion dollars a year on training by 2035, yet most of it never changes what people do on the job.
WritingSeries
Series · 31 reads
Short, practical reads on compliance, quality, procurement, training and, since October 2026, technology and AI. Most come from the six books. Each is built on a real, documented case, with the statistics sourced and a working tool on the page. Why the name? A KPI can show that a course was completed or an audit was passed, and still miss whether anything changed. Each read looks at what sits behind the number.
01 of 07 · From Training That Sticks
Making the training you pay for actually change behaviour, and proving it.
Learning & development
Companies will spend their way to roughly 800 billion dollars a year on training by 2035, yet most of it never changes what people do on the job.
Learning & development
Strong onboarding has been linked to 82 per cent better retention and 70 per cent higher productivity, and one of the most cited gains in the...
Learning & development
Completion rates and happy-sheets are the two numbers that prove nothing and get quoted the most.
Learning & development
The one-day workshop feels efficient and forgets fast.
Learning & development
After a 1978 crash where a competent crew ran out of fuel while distracted, aviation rebuilt its training around realistic scenarios and human...
02 of 07 · From Procurement That Performs
Turning supplier spend into growth, performance and resilience.
Procurement
A team negotiates a hard 12 per cent off a big contract, everyone celebrates, and a year later the finance director cannot find the money.
Procurement
Every vendor now sells an AI that will transform your buying.
Procurement
A ten-minute fire at a chip plant in New Mexico hobbled Ericsson and barely touched Nokia, buying from the same supplier.
Procurement
Most organisations control the twenty per cent of suppliers that make up eighty per cent of spend, and ignore the long tail.
Procurement
The person who ran Apple's supply chain became its chief executive.
03 of 07 · From Compliance Beyond Ticking the Box
Turning compliance from a cost you endure into a system that protects and pays.
Compliance
Wells Fargo had a code of conduct, an ethics line and mandatory training while staff opened around 3.5 million accounts nobody asked for.
Compliance
At Wirecard, warnings about a 1.9 billion euro hole were raised for years and waved away, until the company collapsed.
Compliance
A record 1.2 billion euro GDPR fine for Meta.
Compliance
Every compliance programme talks about tone from the top.
Compliance
Most organisations respond to a regulator's finding by fixing the symptom, closing the action and moving on, until the same problem returns under...
04 of 07 · From Key Compliance Models
The frameworks that decide whether a business is protected or exposed, in plain language.
Compliance
HSBC had three lines of defence on paper and still moved hundreds of millions for the wrong people, paying 1.9 billion dollars in 2012.
Compliance
Most owners think a compliance management system is a folder of policies.
Compliance
COSO is the framework auditors quote and everyone else nods along to.
Compliance
Ask a board how much risk it is willing to take and you usually get a speech, not a sentence.
Compliance
Owners often think they must choose between the big compliance frameworks.
05 of 07 · From The Compliance Business Model Navigator
How compliance creates advantage, wins budget, and how the industry itself makes money.
Compliance industry
Most firms treat compliance as the department that says no.
Compliance industry
The compliance industry is enormous and strangely invisible.
Compliance industry
Compliance leaders lose budget arguments because they bring fear to a fight that is decided by numbers.
Compliance industry
Bolted-on compliance is the second desk you visit after the work is done, the sign-off that slows everything and catches little.
Compliance industry
Uber and Airbnb both grew fast by treating local rules as obstacles to out-run.
06 of 07 · From Key Quality Models
The models and standards that build quality in, rather than inspect it out.
Quality assurance
TQM sounds like a relic of 1980s manufacturing.
Quality assurance
Six Sigma got wrapped in coloured belts and Greek letters until it sounded like a cult.
Quality assurance
Most ISO 9001 certificates hang on a wall while the business runs exactly as it did before, now with more paperwork.
Quality assurance
Toyota built the most admired manufacturing system in the world not through big transformative projects but through a relentless habit of tiny...
Quality assurance
Most businesses know if this month was good.
07 of 07 · New theme
What the AI build-out costs, who carries the risk, and how to buy it well.
Technology & AI
In one quarter NVIDIA sold $89 billion of data centre kit. In a full year Apple spent $12.7 billion on all its buildings, servers and equipment put together.
Short, practical reads on compliance, quality, procurement, training and technology. Most come from my six books, and each is built on a real, documented company case.
A KPI can show that a course was completed or an audit was passed, and still miss whether anything changed. Each read looks at what sits behind the number.
Business Insights explains one model at a time in about a minute. These reads give the full company case and a tool to apply it. Most draw on the same six books.