Are You Still The Future?

Finalist for the Business Book Awards 2024 Leadership category.

In this book I share the stories of great leaders I’ve coached and mentored. Those who have made a difference, who have found their way. I’ll take you on a journey through my personal and professional life and how through being able to live by my values (fortunately, pretty much most of the time), I’ve achieved happiness and success beyond my dreams.

This book is for the leaders of tomorrow. The ones who are hungry and thirsty for success in all its forms and also for those who have achieved success and are wondering what to do with it. It’s not just about the money, but also about finding meaning in your life. For us it may seem quite ordinary to be good, wholesome wise leaders. For many, this journey is quite extraordinary.

Irrespective of how we got here, hopefully we are always able to answer the question in the affirmative:
“Yes, I am still the future.”

Undiagnosed dyslexia meant that I was something of a late starter. However, making up for lost time, I now have over 30 years' experience as a senior executive having held various MD, President, CEO and Chairman roles in global finance, IT and e-publishing.A great believer in the use of all the human 'talents', I was interviewed by the FT on the use of intuition in business and featured as an example of an inspiring holistic leader.Beginning my career in the financial markets in the City, rapid promotion took me to Chicago, learning about the futures and commodity markets. Later, after working with a major US bond house, I moved into general management with a focus on the development of global sales and marketing strategies working on projects in Europe, the Middle-East and Asia-Pacific - developing, in the process, a significant insight into geographical cultural differences. I then became President, and later Chairman, of the International Division of Oster Communications Inc. best known for its FutureSource real-time market data service and the Oster-Dow Jones News services. Responsible for expanding the business internationally, I was a key member and then leader of the team that increased the enterprise value of the business by a factor of 5 during an 11 year period, whilst also taking the company from bottom quartile to top quartile in areas of service reliability, customer satisfaction and client retention. Later, whilst Chairman of Itsmobile, a Dublin based company that became a leading player in the mobile payment arena, remarkably we managed to raise VC funding for a high tech start-up in the weeks following the dot-com fall-out. In 2003 I decided to follow what had by then become my real passion: the development of senior executive talent and I now work full-time as a business coach, mentor and facilitator specialising in leadership skills and the development of executives and their teams.Over the last decade, I am privileged to have coached and mentored over 60 'C-suite' executives from all over the world, worked with a dozen entrepreneurs and many 'leaders of tomorrow'. With a Masters Degree in Coaching, a Certificate in Applied Neuroscience and my business experience, I find I am well equipped to deal with the many and varied client situations I encounter. Working with my client's 'personal mythology', I seek to discover their unique strengths and internal compass to act as a guide and anchor for all the work that we subsequently do together. I am a passionate believer in the power of people.I have a keen interest in travel, music and a life-long love of learning.