EDITION 1105
26 JANUARY 2026

On this day in 1905, the world’s largest diamond was discovered at the Premier Mine in South Africa. Weighing more than a pound, it was initially dismissed by officials as a worthless crystal and thrown out of a window. Only later was it recognised for what it was.

The stone - later named the Cullinan - was eventually sold to Edward VII and cut into nine major gems and dozens of smaller ones. The leadership lesson? Extraordinary value is often misjudged at first glance. Vision isn’t just about spotting opportunity - it’s about not discarding it too quickly.

The results of this week’s poll are stark. 77% of respondents say they have lost confidence in police leadership. That loss of trust coincides with new data from the Office for National Statistics, showing police now solve just 7.3% of crimes nationally. As the New Statesman notes, officers increasingly fail even to attend crime scenes. Is it any wonder public confidence is ebbing?

With that in mind, here are ten things you didn’t know last week. As ever, feel free to share this edition - or forward it to colleagues and friends who appreciate a sharper take on leadership and life.

William Montgomery
Editor and CEO, TEN

1. How to lead your attention. In a world designed to distract, attention has become a leadership skill in its own right. What you focus on shapes your decisions, your energy, and your impact. Leaders who fail to manage their attention don’t just lose time, they lose clarity, judgement, and ultimately, trust. READ MORE

2. Can anyone stop Donald Trump? The only thing that can stop me is my own morality,” Donald Trump told The New York Times. It was a chillingly blunt admission that he believes power - military, economic or political - is his to use. As he holds court wherever he goes, Europe should be clear-eyed: Trump sees national strength, not laws or treaties, as the final arbiter when powers collide. Congress looks weak, courts uncertain, allies divided. Even those closest to him appear unable - or unwilling - to restrain him. The leadership lesson? When leaders believe they are unchecked, restraint becomes optional, and history tells us that rarely ends well.

3. What leaders talked about in Davos. The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos may have been billed as a “spirit of dialogue”, but anxiety ran through almost every discussion. Artificial intelligence dominated, not just its promise, but fears over jobs, regulation and control. Geopolitics loomed large: wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, rising US-China tension, and the fragility of global alliances. Growth was another concern, with debt, inflation and sluggish productivity never far away. Climate change remained on the agenda, though with a noticeable shift from ambition to pragmatism. The subtext? A world more connected than ever; and less certain about where it’s heading.

4. When policy bites, signals follow. Luxury car sales in the UK are stalling - and not by a little. According to Bloomberg, registrations for Ferrari fell 44% year-on-year in Q3 2025, Rolls-Royce dropped 26%, and Aston Martin slid by nearly a third. The backdrop is clear: tax changes targeting wealth, and a growing number of high-net-worth individuals leaving - or threatening to leave - the UK. The leadership lesson? Behaviour changes faster than rhetoric. Policy sends signals, markets listen, and confidence - once lost - is expensive to rebuild.

5. From gardening to doomscrolling. Scrolling on social media is now Britons’ most common pastime, and the least enjoyed. In a survey of more than 2,000 adults by psychologists at the University of Sussex, doomscrolling topped the list for frequency, yet ranked near the bottom for satisfaction. Listening to music, by contrast, was the most pleasurable. We spend more time on the thing that makes us feel worst. That alone should give leaders pause. Attention is being consumed, not nourished. Once, leisure restored us - gardening, walking, conversation. Today it exhausts us. The leadership lesson? What people do most isn’t always what serves them best, and systems that reward addiction over wellbeing rarely end well. Which best describes your downtime? VOTE HERE

6. Variety keeps you alive. Doing the same thing well is often praised. But a major new study from Harvard University suggests that mixing things up may matter more than we think. Tracking more than 110,000 people over 30 years, researchers found that those who did a wider variety of physical activities had a 19% lower risk of early death, even when the total amount of exercise was the same. In short: variety beats routine. The leadership lesson is obvious. Strength comes from range. Organisations - like bodies - thrive when they cross-train: different skills, perspectives, and experiences. Stick rigidly to one way of doing things, and you may be fit, but fragile.

7. Siri grows up. For years, Apple users have joked that Siri was more obedient than intelligent. That’s about to change. According to Bloomberg, Apple plans to relaunch Siri as a fully-fledged AI chatbot, powered by Google Gemini, embedded across iPhone, iPad and Mac later this year. Voice and text. Context and conversation. Possibly even a wearable AI “pin”. The leadership lesson? Catch-up isn’t failure - standing still is. Even the most admired brands must reinvent their weakest link. Loyalty buys patience, not immunity.

8. A rare wobble for Farage. It’s not often the news tilts away from Nigel Farage, but this week it did. New polling from More In Common shows Kemi Badenoch overtaking Farage on net approval for the first time in a year. Her decision to remove Robert Jenrick, amid rumours of a jump to Reform, appears to have landed well - even with some Reform voters. The leadership lesson? Decisiveness still cuts through. Voters may disagree with your politics, but they respect clarity, and they’re increasingly suspicious of ambition dressed up as principle.

9. Grief becomes art. I went to see Hamnet and loved it. It is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed bestseller and co-written by director Chloé Zhao. The film imagines how the death of Shakespeare’s young son may have shaped Hamlet. Jessie Buckley, already a Golden Globe winner, and Paul Mescal are quietly extraordinary, grounding the story in marriage, parenthood, and loss rather than literary myth. This isn’t a glossy period romance. It’s earthy, restrained, and devastating when it needs to be. Whether the theory convinces is almost beside the point. The film’s achievement is showing how grief can be shaped into meaning. Go and see it on the big screen before it’s too late.

10. The bottom line. According to Electoral Calculus, if a general election were held tomorrow, Labour would finish sixth; its worst result in more than a century. Keir Starmer would lose Holborn and St Pancras to the Greens. Reform UK would win a slim majority with 335 seats, while the Conservative Party would become the official opposition on just 92 seats. British politics is fragmenting fast, and the old assumptions no longer hold.