The executive head had flown in the night before, straight from briefing member states on the budget. The retreat had been planned for months; the budget news was newer than that. About twenty minutes in, they put their notes down...

In my years of working with leadership teams in science-based organisations, one scene repeats. The team is meeting to agree a recommendation it must issue, and the evidence itself is not in dispute. Someone talks about confidence intervals. Someone else...

Most of my work with teams over the past year has begun with some version of the same conversation. Budgets are shrinking and mandates are contested. Institutions that took decades to build are being asked to justify their existence inside...