The organisational detective
Peter Barnes
Co-Host, Risk Worth Taking
Peter is known for challenging conventional assumptions and for helping leaders understand not just how organisations are supposed to work, but how they actually work.
Profile
Peter Barnes is a transformation leader, technology executive and organisational change specialist with more than thirty years of experience helping organisations navigate complexity, growth and disruption.
Throughout his career he has led large-scale business and technology transformations across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors, working with organisations ranging from high-growth technology businesses to multinational enterprises and government departments. His experience spans strategy, customer experience, digital transformation, IT leadership, organisational design and operational improvement.
Across hundreds of programmes and change initiatives, Peter has become less interested in technology itself and increasingly fascinated by how organisations respond to change.
Organisations are social systems disguised as process systems.
What if the most interesting thing about AI isn't the technology, but what it reveals about the organisations using it?
The series
On Risk Worth Taking
Peter's role in the series is to connect technology discussions back to the organisational realities that sit behind them:
- Who owns the decision?
- Why do people trust what they trust?
- How does knowledge travel through an organisation?
- Why do organisations struggle to act on things they already know?
- What does good actually look like?
His view is simple
Understanding comes before control.
And increasingly, organisations are getting less time to misunderstand themselves.
Perspective
What Peter looks for
As co-host of Risk Worth Taking, Peter brings a systems-thinking perspective to conversations about AI, leadership and organisational behaviour. His central belief is that technology rarely creates new organisational problems. More often, it exposes existing behaviours, assumptions and weaknesses that were already present but less visible.
Experience
The record behind the questions
- More than thirty years helping organisations navigate complexity, growth and disruption
- 19+ years as an interim CIO, IT Director, and transformation programme director
- Non-executive director and board adviser
- Public and private sector experience, including the Ministry of Justice and DWP
- Management of Risk and ITIL certifications
- AI education from Oxford's Saïd Business School
- Former CEO of CO2Apps UK
Themes
Recurring themes
- Organisational behaviour
- Decision-making
- Accountability
- Trust
- Leadership
- Business transformation
- Governance and risk
- The impact of AI on organisations
Practice
Areas of expertise
- Digital and business transformation
- Technology leadership
- Customer experience and service transformation
- Organisational design and operating models
- Governance, risk and compliance
- Programme and portfolio leadership
- AI adoption and organisational readiness
- Leadership and decision-making