Glue The Door Shut

A career built in the boardroom. A life that never once stuck to the agenda: because chaos, kids, pets, culture clashes, and neurodiversity had other plans.

I was never the smart one at school. Twenty years into a career spanning multiple sectors, advising business owners and CEOs, I still haven't shaken the feeling that everyone else had a manual I'd missed. Then I left to build my own HR consultancy - and started noticing the same problem everywhere I looked: leaders convinced their industry was uniquely complicated, when really, it was just people, behaving like people always do.

At home, it was no different. A South African husband, a daughter whose ADHD came in loud, a son navigating hearing loss, dogs, and a diagnosis of my own in my 30s that finally explained the thoroughness everyone used to call "neurotic". The same instinct that made me good at reading a boardroom was the one keeping our household upright.

This book pulls apart the myths the consulting world sells - that you need the qualification, the sector experience, the seniority - and replaces them with what actually works, tested in client meetings and at the school gate in equal measure. Funny, sharp, and unflinching about the parts nobody puts on LinkedIn.