Beyond the coaching room
What happens to people under pressure, and what helps them carry it well? Aida is where I work on it with you, one person at a time. The Collective and blue lemons are where I work on it with tech organisations, and with founders facing a big decision.
The person
My role: Founder
Coaching, courses and the RESET cards. Together we look at what pressure is doing to your brain and body, and build the habits that help you recover and think clearly again.
For: Leaders, founders and professionals who are tired of running on empty.
Get in touch with meThe organisation
My role: Specialist, leadership & human performance
In tech organisations, some pressure is built into the system. The same incidents keep coming back, and the people fixing them wear thinner each time. The Collective is a small team of senior specialists who work on the whole problem together, from the cloud, the code and the data to the people running them. I bring the human side.
For: Tech teams where the same incidents and the same firefighting keep returning.
See how we work as a teamThe decision
My role: Co-founder, with Simone Hume
Founders and business owners face calls they only get to make once or twice: what to charge, who to hire first, when to raise. Simone Hume and I started blue lemons so nobody has to make those calls alone. You book a focused hour, one to one, with a UK expert who has at least 25 years of experience and has already made the same call.
For: Start-up founders and business owners with a big decision in front of them.
Find your expert (opens in a new tab)Resilium Labs · The Collective
The Collective works with tech organisations that keep having the same incidents. The causes rarely stay inside one system. They sit in how leaders behave under pressure, in the governance that shapes what teams can do, and in how software and data are built and run.
So we work on all of it together, as one team. Every specialist has done this work at scale, in real organisations under real pressure, so nobody is experimenting on your production systems or learning on your time.
1
Find what keeps the same incidents coming back. It usually sits across the organisation, well beyond the system that failed.
2
Only the specialists the work needs, each of whom has solved that class of problem before, at scale.
3
One joined-up piece of work. Fixing one condition in isolation tends to move the problem somewhere else.
Learning from incidents, chaos engineering, and the feedback loops that keep systems healthy.
How leaders and teams decide under pressure, and what sustained pressure does to them.
Security and governance that keep pace with how fast teams really work.
How software is built, shipped and run, end to end.
Checking that AI in your operations makes better decisions as well as faster ones.
Graph databases, big data, and seeing the relationships that matter.
Adrian Hornsby · Founder of Resilium Labs
Resilience & operational excellence
Former Principal Engineer at AWS, where he wrote much of Amazon's resilience and chaos engineering guidance. Author of Why We Still Suck at Resilience.
James Saull
Cloud, security & governance
Nearly a decade as a Principal at AWS, guiding enterprises such as Barclays, Shell and the BBC into the cloud. Now co-founder and CTO of a SaaS business.
Matt Fitzgerald
Software, data & AI
At Amazon, led a major migration of internal systems onto AWS and built the big-data platform that moved the company off its Oracle data warehouse.
Thomas Blood
Enterprise transformation
A decade at AWS as a Principal Strategic Advisor to C-suite leaders across EMEA. Co-author of Reaching Cloud Velocity.
Sonia Ouarti · Me
Leadership & human performance
More than twenty years in high-pressure corporate roles, including at AWS, with clients such as Google, IBM and Sony Music. Master's in Psychology and Neuroscience. Decision-making under stress, burnout, and the human side of resilience.
Start with one conversation about what you are seeing. We diagnose what is driving it, agree what needs to change and who from the team to bring in, then do the work together, from the systems to the people running them.
I spent more than twenty years in high-pressure, international corporate roles, including at AWS, and worked with clients such as Google, IBM and Sony Music. From the inside, I saw the same thing again and again: capable people struggling, and the cause sitting around them as much as within them. In the culture. In the workload. In a decision they had been left to make alone.
Coaching changes how you carry pressure. Some of the weight only shifts when the organisation changes, or when someone who has been there helps you think a decision through. So I work on all three.
The science underneath stays the same. A brain under sustained pressure narrows its focus and falls back on old habits. Given safety and support, it opens up again: you see more options, and you decide better. Whether I am working with one person, a leadership team or a founder, that is what I am looking for.
Read my storyI'm exhausted, stuck, or reacting more than I'd like to.
Start with Aida
Tell me what is going on and we will work out the best place to start, whether that is private coaching, a course or the RESET cards.
Get in touchOur tech teams keep fighting the same fires, and our leaders are wearing thin.
The Collective
A whole-organisation approach. We start by diagnosing what keeps the incidents coming back, then work on it together as one team: resilience and operations, cloud and security, software, data and AI, and the leaders and people carrying the pressure.
Need a single workshop or keynote? See corporate workshops.
Book a call with The Collective (opens in a new tab)I have a big business decision coming, and I'd rather not make it alone.
blue lemons
Browse the experts, book an hour, and talk it through with someone who has been there.
Find your expert (opens in a new tab)Tell me what is going on and I will point you to the right place, even when that place is somewhere else.
Get in touch