Jim Lawless
Executive teams keep producing strategies their organisations cannot execute. The work that actually moves the system, deciding under incomplete information, holding a hard line through restructure, recovering from a public setback, is left to individual leaders to figure out alone. Most leadership development trains the strategy and assumes the human.
Jim Lawless helps executive teams turn strategy into decisive action under pressure, using his DARE Loop framework and the principles of his bestseller Taming Tigers, which he tested by becoming the first Briton to freedive past 100 metres.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Jim Lawless
- He has put his own method under the most public stress test available: 101 metres on one breath, and a televised race ride from a standing start, both inside the timelines he sets for his clients.
- His DARE Loop gives an executive team a shared, repeatable method, Decision, Action, Result, Evaluate, for committing to bold decisions when certainty is low and consequence is high, then holding themselves to the result.
- He rebuilt Diageo’s legacy global IT function into a data-led, AI-enabled organisation with CIO Benedetto Conversano, work Conversano documents in his forthcoming book The Braveheart CIO.
- He advises CEOs and executive teams at Diageo, Microsoft, Novartis, Bayer and BAE Systems, and coaches the Swiss Olympic and Ski teams, so the same operating model runs from the boardroom to elite sport.
- He spent a decade as a City of London commercial solicitor before this work, so a board conversation about accountability and disciplined decision-making is held in their language, not in performance metaphor.
Biography highlights
- Author of Taming Tigers: Do Things You Never Thought You Could, Random House (Virgin Books), international bestseller; forthcoming title The DARE Loop.
- Creator of the DARE Loop, his decision and execution framework used inside boards and executive teams globally.
- First Briton to freedive past 100 metres, a national No Limits record of 101m, and a televised jockey within twelve months of first sitting on a horse.
- Founder of Symmetry, the advisory practice he has run since 2000, with work across more than 300 organisations.
- Ranked No. 1 motivational speaker outside the US on the Global Gurus list, and a member of the Forbes Coaches Council.
- Former City of London commercial solicitor and international legal counsel; elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2008.
Biography
Most strategy fails on the human side of the line. The board signs off the plan, the operating model is redrawn, and somewhere between the steering committee and the front line the behaviour stops changing.
Jim Lawless works in that gap. His DARE Loop, a decision-engineering framework built on the sequence Decision, Action, Result, Evaluate, gives leaders a repeatable method for committing to bold decisions when certainty is low and the cost of getting them wrong is high.
He has tested the same method on himself, in public. Inside a year of first sitting on a horse he qualified and rode as a televised jockey. Inside eight months of learning to freedive he became the first Briton past 100 metres, reaching 101m on a single breath.
His bestseller Taming Tigers (Random House) is the foundation of that thinking and has been translated into multiple languages. Through Symmetry, the practice he has run since 2000, he advises executive teams at Diageo, Microsoft, Novartis and BAE Systems and coaches the Swiss Olympic and Ski teams. His rebuild of Diageo’s global IT function with CIO Benedetto Conversano features in Conversano’s forthcoming book, The Braveheart CIO.
Key speaking topics
- Self-leadership and composure under pressure
- Strategy execution in complex organisations
- Leading through restructure and disruption
- High-performance team behaviour
- Decision-making under uncertainty
- Personal and organisational resilience
- Behaviour change as a leadership discipline
Ideal for
- CEOs and executive committees holding a strategy through restructure or recovery
- Senior leadership populations being asked to change behaviour, not just process
- High-performance environments where standards have to be held under pressure, including elite sport
- HR and L&D leads building a resilience and self-leadership thread into executive development
Audience outcomes
- The DARE Loop as a working mental model, Decision, Action, Result, Evaluate, that leaders can apply to their own decisions the same week.
- A bold strategic goal already in motion by the end of the session, with an owned plan to deliver it.
- A sharper read on where strategy execution is breaking down on the human side, not the planning side.
- A clearer shared language for composure, fear and risk in senior conversations.
- A worked example, drawn from his own record attempts, of what disciplined behaviour change looks like under time pressure.
Talks
Takes an audience from waiting for permission to owning their decisions, using the DARE Loop to turn ambition into committed action at speed.
Key takeaways:
- The DARE Loop as a repeatable model: Decision, Action, Result, Evaluate
- How to design backwards from a future result instead of repeating last year’s habits
- Tools to manage the self-doubt that comes with moving outside the comfort zone
For CEOs and executive teams whose enterprise strategy has been rolled out but is not yet changing behaviour, a disciplined way to deliver it through people at the speed the market demands.
Key takeaways:
- Why empowerment cannot be commanded, and what people actually need before they will act under uncertainty
- The pre-taken decisions and commitments that let a strategy execute without escalating to the top
- How an executive team’s own behaviour, not its messaging, becomes the proof for the organisation
Treats strategy execution as a complex systems problem for the executive team, where every move at the top ripples through thousands of decisions and actions below it.
Key takeaways:
- Why execution now behaves like a wicked problem for the executive team
- How the team’s own moves shape the Decisions, Actions, and Results across the organisation
- The discipline of evaluating honestly and iterating fast under pressure
Looks at how to design a future-fit organisation when the future itself is unknown, drawing on the agile operating models Jim has seen built inside global brands.
Key takeaways:
- How leading organisations build for speed and adaptability under uncertainty
- What an agile, empowered organisation actually asks of its leaders
- Where to design for adaptability instead of betting on a fixed forecast