Insights
Essays by Akis Tsekouras on running organisations, mostly from the inside. The oldest is from 2014, eleven years before Simulen was founded.
2026
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Fewer than a hundred employees, almost all the rules
From 1 November, Greek pay transparency law applies to every private employer from the first hire.
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S is for sovereignty
Surviving the AI singularity is no longer a matter of political pride for Europe; reclaiming sovereignty over models, data, and silicon is a matter of survival.
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You either win or you lose (learning optional)
More often than not, you plainly lose and learn precisely nothing.
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From punch cards to tell-n-code
From punch cards to BASIC to a small army of coding agents: every step made the human-machine interface a little kinder. The latest jump is astonishing, but it is evolution, not revolution, and it still needs an engineer behind it.
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More is different: my useless PhD just became relevant
Twenty years after a doctorate in complex-systems modelling stopped being good dinner-party conversation, the word at its heart, emergence, has become the word of the decade in AI.
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Some of your people must hate you
If everyone finds you great, you are not actually managing.
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The mortal sin
Dotted reporting lines should not exist. Ever.
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The pay transparency directive nobody seems to be reading
The EU Pay Transparency Directive becomes binding on 7 June 2026, and most employers are nowhere near ready.
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Traditional consulting will die by PowerPoint
AI will not kill consulting; PowerPoint is already taking care of that.
2020
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The surprising road to better decisions: unconditional transparency
Why leaders should share by default, withhold only when necessary, and use transparency to improve decisions.
2017
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How to fix a Ferrari engine on the run
A practical view of distressed project recovery when the project cannot simply stop.
2016
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The People manifesto
A manifesto for graceful workplaces that put people before structures and processes.
2015
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The planning fallacy
Why deterministic planning fails in uncertain systems, and how practitioners can plan with humility.
2014
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Big data and the bottom-up malevolence
Big data creates value only when it starts with the business problem, not the dataset.
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Playful leadership: the fun way to effectiveness
What parenting can teach leaders about playfulness, trust, and healthier teams.
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The lost art of business symbiosis
How interconnected business ecosystems make collaborative value creation more powerful than local optimisation.
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