On judgement, power and institutions.
Advice and writing on how leaders are chosen, how power moves and why capable people fail when it matters, from someone who has spent more than a decade in the rooms where those calls are made.
Dale McDermott studies how power is actually exercised: who gets to hold it, what separates real judgement from mere competence, and why capable people fail in the moments that matter most.
The work is discreet by design. The counsel sits with the person who has to make the call, not the audience. What travels between the advisory, the essays and the conversations is a single conviction: judgement matters more than credentials, and institutions are only as strong as the people willing to tell the truth inside them.
The advice, the essays and the conversations all argue the same thing from different rooms.
The Advisor
Counsel for senior leaders and the boards they answer to, at the moments that decide a reputation: an appointment, a crisis, a transition that does not forgive a bad call. Private, and by referral.
The Writer
Essays on leadership, power and institutional health that take a position and hold it. No hedging, no house style, just the argument you'd hear if the room were smaller.
Explore The WriterIn Conversation
Interviews and moderated conversations with the people who hold power, from a Taoiseach's keynote to a Canadian party leader.
Explore Speaking & PressJudgement vs. Competence
Why highly qualified leaders fail in the moments that matter most.
The Architecture of Power
How influence actually moves through an organisation, regardless of the org chart.
Institutional Health
Building structures that survive the individual leader.
From the desk.
The School Question: Why Canada Asks Where You're Going.
Ireland asks which school you went to. Britain reads your accent. Canada asks something better, and on 16 September in Strasbourg it started asking it of itself.
The First Week: Why Authority Is Claimed, Not Conferred.
Andy Burnham has done more to establish authority in a week than his predecessor managed in two years. The lesson isn't about politics. It's about how power is actually taken.
If the decision matters, the conversation is worth having properly.