the sherpa

Insights

What twenty-five years
actually teaches you.

02

Why Agile Fails in Banks — And What Actually Fixes It

Agile was designed for product teams with autonomy. Banks are compliance-first, hierarchy-deep, and audit-conscious. The collision produces ceremony without delivery. Here are the five specific failure points — and the structural adaptations that make agile viable in regulated environments.

Agile · Delivery

03

The Tenured Manager With Eighteen Months to Retirement

The most underdiagnosed transformation risk is not resistance — it is strategic patience used as sabotage. This person will attend every workshop, nod at every milestone, and simply not change. Here is how to identify it early, and why most change managers miss it entirely.

Change Management

04

What R20bn in Transformation Taught Me About Operating Models

The single most consistent finding across 25 years: organisations redesign their org chart and call it an operating model. They are not the same thing. An org chart describes hierarchy. An operating model describes how value actually flows — and that distinction costs billions when it is missed.

Operating Model

05

The 90-Day Diagnostic — What I Do First When a Programme Is Stalling

A practical, structured piece on the sherpa's actual entry methodology. The first four weeks are not about fixing anything. They are about understanding who actually controls what — which is almost never what the org chart says.

Methodology

06

Boards Are Approving AI Strategies They Cannot Interrogate

The gap between AI deployment and AI governance in financial services is widening faster than most risk functions can absorb. Here is what board-level AI accountability actually requires — and why most current frameworks will not survive the first regulatory challenge.

AI Governance

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