Mostyn Wilson

A dog catching a frisbee is doing things most of us couldn't begin to calculate.

Wind speed, spin, trajectory, the lot.

Except the dog isn't calculating any of it. It just runs so the frisbee stays at the same angle in its eye, it jumps, and ends up in exactly the right place.

I needed the first half of my career at KPMG to learn what the dog does on instinct.

My reflex with a hard problem was always to add. More analysis, another model, ten more slides. It felt rigorous.

The work that actually moved people was always the version I'd stripped back to a single clear idea.

That's why Steve Jobs said simple is harder than complex.

Anyone can make a problem more complicated.

Cutting it back to what actually matters is the real work, and it's the part almost everyone skips.

The dog never learned the physics.

It found the one rule that mattered, and trusted it.

Most of us know the simple version. We just need to trust it enough to use it.

♻️ Send this to someone who's trying to fix a complex problem
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This week's edition is all about whether you're having the right kind of mid-life crisis...
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The dog and the frisbee comes from a 2012 paper of the same name by Andy Haldane at the Bank of England, who showed that simple rules often beat complex ones, even in something as complicated as banking.

The most reliable people in senior roles are often the hardest to promote.

They say yes to everything, answer emails at weekends, and become the person colleagues turn to when something breaks.

The longer they stay in that pattern, the more critical they become to the role they're already in.

Reliability keeps you employed.
Respect gets you promoted.

The people above you are looking for who's built something the business can't easily unbuild.

That's a different kind of work. It looks like:

– Owning a system that outlasts your tasks

– Rare expertise your peers can't replicate

– Influence that makes things happen across teams without meetings

– Results that are visible to the people who make promotion decisions

None of it happens in an inbox at 10pm on a Sunday.

A useful filter for the next request that lands on your desk.

Does it move revenue?
Reduce real risk?
Save meaningful time?
Raise your visibility with the people who decide?

If the answer is no, the senior move is to redirect, delegate, or decline.

Being needed keeps you in the job.

Having leverage gets you the next one.

Full framework on the whiteboard.

📌 Save it for the next time you're about to say yes

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Today's edition was number 90 (!): Why your brain never clocks off after work

Toxic workplaces kill your confidence one “thank you” at a time.

They don’t always yell or threaten.

Sometimes they smile… while they undermine you.

Here are the 7 ways it shows up 👇

1️⃣ You second-guess decisions you once made with certainty.

2️⃣ Wins are brushed aside until you stop celebrating them yourself.

3️⃣ “Constructive feedback” feels like personal attacks.

4️⃣ Overtime stops being appreciated – it’s expected.

5️⃣ Boundaries get labelled as “attitude problems.”

6️⃣ The goalposts keep moving so success feels impossible.

7️⃣ Gratitude is used to silence your concerns.

🚩 Truth bomb: This is not normal.

Your worth isn’t measured by:

– How many extra hours you work
– How much criticism you can take
– How little praise you need
– How many “urgent” weekend calls you answer

A toxic workplace will:

↳ Convince you you’re the problem
↳ Make you believe you don’t deserve better
↳ Benefit from your self-doubt

But here’s the reality...
You deserve a workplace that:

✅ Respects your boundaries
✅ Supports your growth
✅ Celebrates your wins
✅ Values your input

💬 Which of these 7 signs have you seen at work?

Drop the number in the comments – you might help someone realise they're not the problem.

Follow me (Mostyn Wilson) for more on being happier and fulfilled at work.

📌P.S. I'm hosting a free webinar on Thursday (15th January). It's for experienced leaders and professionals who want to make a career move in 2026 but don't want to risk getting it wrong.

Register here: https://lnkd.in/ebnXvrj9

Middle management is the most undervalued job in business.

(And that’s a massive problem.)

Because it’s also one of the most important.

I’ve worked with dozens of middle managers.

Almost every one of them sits in the pressure zone:

🎯 Pressure from above to deliver results.
🎯 Pressure from below to fix breakdowns.
🎯 Pressure from all sides to keep people engaged, productive, and sane.

They’re expected to be coaches, translators, therapists, operators – sometimes all before lunch.

And yet...

While execs get credit and front-line teams get support…

Middle managers?
They quietly carry the weight of the system.

Still overlooked.
Still under-coached.
Still expected to “just figure it out.”

If we don't look after middle managers, then what happens when they break?

→ Teams stall.
→ Morale crumbles.
→ Strategy collapses into noise.

But if we empower them?
We unlock exponential performance across the whole team.

Because the best middle managers:
✅ Keep teams grounded during change.
✅ Translate strategy into human action.
✅ Spot small issues before they explode.

They are the link.
They are the leverage.
They are the difference between organisations that spin… and ones that scale.

If you’re building a high-performance culture:

✨ Start in the middle.
🧩 Stay close to the tension.
🛠️ Support the people holding it all together.

♻️ Repost this to give middle management the credit (and backing) they deserve.

👉 What’s one way your company could better support middle managers right now?
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📌 P.S. Follow me (Mostyn Wilson) for more workplace truths.

"It's just how he is."

Five words that destroy your culture.

You've heard them:

About the partner with the temper.

About the head of sales who "delivers anyway".

About the COO everyone gives a wide berth on Mondays.

A mentor at KPMG told me early on:

"You'll be judged not by who you hire, but by who you should have let go and didn't."

I didn't fully understand it until I was the one having to act on it.

The first time a senior person gets away with something and nobody calls it out, everyone else takes note.

By the fifth time, it's just how things are.

But here's what many leaders miss:

This is the exact moment the people who were going the extra mile quietly stop.

Because it’s about fairness.

And it shouldn’t be one rule for them and another for us.

The conversation you overhear on a Tuesday morning and tell yourself you'll deal with later?

That’s the conversation writing your culture.

Your culture is the worst behaviour you're willing to ignore.

♻️ Share with a leader who gets this right.

🔔 Follow me (Mostyn Wilson) for more on smarter leadership.

For years, I thought the hardest part of my career would be the external stuff.

Promotions. Difficult clients. Big presentations. Long hours.

None of it came close.

The hardest battles I've ever fought happened quietly, inside my own head.

Self-doubt right before the biggest moments.

Comparison stealing the joy from real wins.

The voice telling me I wasn't ready, wasn't enough, wasn't the right person for the room.

Nobody saw those fights.
Nobody applauded when I won them.

Here's what helped me start winning:

1/ I stopped waiting to feel ready, because confidence shows up after, not before.

2/ I started questioning the voice in my head, because most of the time, it was lying.

3/ I stopped comparing my inside to everyone else's outside.

4/ I found a few people I could be fully honest with.

5/ I treated my mental health as part of my performance, not separate from it.

The battles got quieter.
And I got better at fighting them.

If you're in one right now, you're not behind.

You're not broken.

You're just doing the work most people never talk about.

Keep going.

♻️ Repost if this might help someone today

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Hard work gets you results.

But that's not the best part.

It changes who you are.

You might move up, and you might earn more.

But the better impact is this:

You can show up even when you don't feel like it.

You can take a setback without falling apart.

You stop settling for "good enough".

That version of you is the real payoff.

Once you become that person, you don't need to rely on luck or timing.

You can trust yourself to figure it out, and keep going.

So ask yourself:

Am I chasing results?

Or am I building someone who can't be stopped?

One depends on circumstances.

The other changes your trajectory for life.
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Repost to share with others, and follow me (Mostyn Wilson) for more like this.

The kindest leader I ever worked with was also the most ruthless.

He ran a huge part of KPMG.

Asked about your weekend.
Remembered your wife's name.
Made coffee for the team.

And he'd close a deal, exit a partner, or kill a strategy faster than anyone I've ever worked for.

Nobody on his team feared him.
But everyone respected him.

I used to think kindness and ruthlessness couldn't sit together.

Now I think they're the same thing.

Here's what I see in the senior leaders I work with now:

The ones losing authority aren't the kind ones. They're the unclear ones.

The unclear ones confuse kindness with avoidance.

They soften the message until nobody knows what they're being asked to do.

Then they punish their team for guessing wrong.

Real kindness looks different:

✅ Saying no without apologising for it
✅ Disagreeing without making it personal
✅ Holding the bar without lowering the tone
✅ Making tough calls without making villains

The fastest way to lose a team isn't being too direct.

It's being unclear about what you actually expect.

The leaders who shape cultures all have the same old-fashioned quality:

They say what they mean. And mean what they say.

But they say it without aggression.

That blend – of kindness with conviction – is what the best leaders have.

Their kindness doesn't weaken their authority.

It's the only authority that lasts.

♻️ Repost if this resonates.

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The most valuable people in a business are often the ones who make meetings a little uncomfortable.

They're rarely the loud or political ones. Quite the opposite.

✅ They ask the questions everyone else avoids.

✅ They push for clarity when a vague answer would be easier.

✅ They won't nod along just to keep things pleasant.

And that can get misread.

Instead of being seen as useful, they get labelled intense, or difficult, or "a lot".

But most workplaces don't struggle because too many people challenge things.

They struggle because too few do.

Comfort protects weak thinking.

It lets bad ideas pass untested, risks stay hidden, and decisions move ahead without real scrutiny.

The people who create a bit of unease are the ones who break that.

They change the rules of the room and surface what others would rather leave alone, because they care how things hold up six months later.

Being pleasant helps you fit in.
Being constructively uncomfortable is what earns respect.

I've pulled together 8 of these types in the carousel.

Which one are you?

♻️ Send this to someone who keeps raising the standard

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I spent years believing ambition required sacrifice.

Late nights became the norm.
Dinner plans became apologies.
Life existed in whatever time was left over.

"Once I finish this project, I'll slow down."

I must have said that a hundred times.

But every win just moved the finish line.
Every success became the new baseline.
The space for everything else kept shrinking.

That's when I saw it clearly:

Ambition wasn't the problem.
How I'd been taught to pursue it was.

We've been sold a story that working harder means caring more.
That exhaustion proves dedication.
That sacrifice validates ambition.

It's all backwards.

When your ambition and your personal life are not aligned, you burn out.
But when they are aligned, you build up.

Ambition was never meant to cost us our personal life.
It was meant to make our personal life better.

The best measure of success isn’t how far you go.
It’s what still fits in your life when you get there.

🔔 Follow me for more on achieving your ambitions AND being happy and fulfilled while doing so.

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