About
About
David Tomlinson
A leader gets good people to do great things.
A leader gets good people to do great things.
I’ve been a leader several times, and worked for as many or more. Underneath all the noise, getting good people to do great things is what’s going on. Except when it isn’t, when something goes out of tune, or you keep hitting the same restart in the same place.
I’ve been a leader several times, and worked for as many or more. Underneath all the noise, getting good people to do great things is what’s going on. Except when it isn’t, when something goes out of tune, or you keep hitting the same restart in the same place.
Forty years in and around business. Engineering, electronics, manufacturing, marketing, software, cybersecurity, encryption. Four companies, twenty-five years at board level, two acquisitions, a spin-off, two international patents.
Forty years in and around business. Engineering, electronics, manufacturing, marketing, software, cybersecurity, encryption. Four companies, twenty-five years at board level, two acquisitions, a spin-off, two international patents.
Whether I’m the expert in the room or the beginner is immaterial. Being interested in being right is not the same as getting it right. So I either know what I’m talking about, or I’m about to learn something new.
Whether I’m the expert in the room or the beginner is immaterial. Being interested in being right is not the same as getting it right. So I either know what I’m talking about, or I’m about to learn something new.
I went to school on one side of the railway tracks and lived on the other. Literally, and metaphorically. Years of crossing between two worlds, conforming automatically to two slightly divergent edits of the same reality, can teach you something you can’t unlearn: that what everyone takes for the way things are is mostly agreement. Every place runs on a common sense of its own, quietly setting the floor and the ceiling of what its people will even consider, and then they live and work inside those bounds without knowing they’re there.
I went to school on one side of the railway tracks and lived on the other. Literally, and metaphorically. Years of crossing between two worlds, conforming automatically to two slightly divergent edits of the same reality, can teach you something you can’t unlearn: that what everyone takes for the way things are is mostly agreement. Every place runs on a common sense of its own, quietly setting the floor and the ceiling of what its people will even consider, and then they live and work inside those bounds without knowing they’re there.
Although my career has been around technology, a CEO has to be a fluent and capable generalist, at home in sales, in the numbers, in the factory and the boardroom. Seldom the expert in more than one, but fluent across all of them. That’s the right training for seeing across a whole organisation at once, and picking up the friction and voids between the parts the specialists can see.
Although my career has been around technology, a CEO has to be a fluent and capable generalist, at home in sales, in the numbers, in the factory and the boardroom. Seldom the expert in more than one, but fluent across all of them. That’s the right training for seeing across a whole organisation at once, and picking up the friction and voids between the parts the specialists can see.
The real value isn’t in the sector, the discipline or the hours. It’s in the moments when letting go of the established frame is the way to see that everything needed is right there.
The real value isn’t in the sector, the discipline or the hours. It’s in the moments when letting go of the established frame is the way to see that everything needed is right there.
Now I do this for people who know that pivotal moment is there, and are just trying to get to it.
Now I do this for people who know that pivotal moment is there, and are just trying to get to it.
What’s up?
Learn More
Copyright © 2025 David Tomlinson
Wellisford Consulting. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2025 David Tomlinson
Wellisford Consulting. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2025 David Tomlinson
Wellisford Consulting. All rights reserved.