Barry Flack

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Stop paving cow paths with AI. Fix the road first. | Barry Flack Stop paving cow paths with AI. Fix the road first.

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New Post : In defence of Mastery
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Employee engagement surveys are expensive theatre.

Stop the performance. Kill the consultants peddling happiness metrics. Bin the surveys that measure nothing useful.

Fix the broken systems that make work frustrating.

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☠️ Doom mongering is back in vogue it seems.

But the very best SMEs are using regulatory changes to build out better workplaces.

Stop yer greetin'. Start adapting.

Today's SME People Insights below.

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You Can't Outsource Sensemaking to Gen AI The UK economy’s complexity can’t be solved with AI shortcuts. SMEs must democratise intelligence, empowering frontline people to sense, interpret, and adapt.

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Stop Reacting to Employment Law. Start Building Your People Product Desperately in need of some economic stability, we are instead playing parliamentary ‘ping-pong’ with the Employment Relations Bill between the Lord and the Commons. MPs have decisively rejected all L...

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You Can't Outsource Sensemaking to Gen AI We all know the UK economy is serving up a modern day Storm Katrina right now. Inflation still biting at 3.

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The MIT Reality Check We Actually Needed We all are aware of the 70% Digital Transformation Failure!! Well hold my beer. It seems we now have a 95% Gen AI Failure rate.

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Without Leadership Hunger, AI is Just Another Tool. SME leaders didn’t lose hunger—stability rewarded it out of them. With AI reshaping business dynamics, passive leadership means decline. Growth now demands intentional design, not survival.

SME leaders didn’t lose hunger—stability rewarded it out of them. With AI reshaping business dynamics, passive leadership means decline. Growth now demands intentional design, not survival.

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AI is Not Your Threat. Your Outdated Leadership is. Stop building better bosses, start building organisations where leadership, decision-making, and strategic thinking are distributed across teams, not concentrated at the top.

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Stop Treating Employment Compliance and Innovation Like Enemies Organisations face a single challenge: adapt structurally or be exposed by external forces such as AI and regulatory change. Coherence—aligning tech, regulation, and humanity—is now essential.

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Cultural Readiness Assessment

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Cultural Readiness Assessment

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Stop Pretending Complexity Is New We’ve ignored complexity for 40 years. AI won’t save us — it’ll surface the cracks. Our future, like our present, isn't about control and speed, but redesign, sense-making, and real work.

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You Don’t Need More AI tools. You Need Less BS Work. AI won’t fix pointless work, just accelerate it. The future of SMEs isn’t faster reports, but redesigned work where BS is cut, client value leads, and AI handles grunt work.

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Why Forcing People Back to 20th Century Offices Kills 21st Century Innovation AI won’t save broken systems but expose them. The future of work won’t be built on square footage or legacy thinking, but on culture-first strategies powered by insight, not nostalgia.

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If you’ve a people problem, you’ll have an AI problem Leaders say “I must do something about AI". Their instinct is action. But without the right cultural foundations, action misfires. AI doesn’t fix broken systems, it amplifies them. Culture then Tech.

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Why Forcing People Back to 20th Century Offices Kills 21st Century… | Barry Flack Why Forcing People Back to 20th Century Offices Kills 21st Century Innovation

Latest Newsletter has dropped on LinkedIn.

Please do share and subscribe for regular insights into the issues #SMEs leaders must resolve. This time, holding our collective nerve through RTO mandates.

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If you’ve a people problem, you’ll have an AI problem Shared with 10,729 followers | 1,105 LinkedIn subscribers (and growing) “I know I need to do something about AI”. I find these words reverberating around the corridors within the world of work quite a...

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Despite claims to the contrary, this platform is a bit 'meh' isn't it?

Convince me otherwise.

Don’t Let Cost Cutting Kill Your AI Ambitions Shared with 10,678 followers | 1,071 LinkedIn subscribers (and growing). For the forward-thinking SME C-Suite | For enlightened HR Professionals | For a growing world of Fractional Executives Welcome ...

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Why Culture eats AI for breakfast – Part 2 Great Tech reveals Operational readiness. If the cultural foundations are shaky, no shiny new AI product will succeed. Instead, shift how people think, what they value, and how they contribute.

For those who don't like their content from LinkedIn, here's my latest newsletter on Substack.

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Why Culture eats AI for breakfast – Part 1 AI, like previous Digital Transformations, often fail because none of the players in the project seem to appreciate the need for strong cultural foundations or the human dimensions to success.

For those with an aversion to LinkedIn as a platform, my newsletter is also available on Substack.

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Why Culture eats AI for breakfast – Part One Shared with 10,645 followers | 1,043 subscribers (and growing). For the forward-thinking SME C-Suite | For enlightened HR Professionals | For a growing world of Fractional Executives A newsletter for ...

Latest edition out today. Please share and subscribe if interested in making great #SME workplaces.

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#HR folks

Each year, my good friends at Lattice publish a "State of People Strategy" Report. A pulse check on all-things-HR.

This year's survey is now open. Takes 10 minutes & it's anonymous.

Please give them your thoughts and share if you can.

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