Abouttheauthor Nic Peeling had 15 years' experience as a front-line manager at QinetiQ ­ a leading international defence and security company. Nic is now semi-retired and works as a Trusted Expert for QinetiQ and is a Visiting Fellow at the Defence College of Management and Technology at Cranfield University. Formerly an award-winning software researcher, he has a doctorate from the Computing Laboratory at Oxford University. Nic remembers vividly all the mistakes he made in the process of becoming an experienced manager ­ experiences that have driven his interest in discovering and distilling what brilliant