A highly acclaimed TV series about a group of British intelligence operatives who have fallen out of favour with the authorities might not seem to give lessons for wealthy families and their advisors, but that is not the case, as this interview shows.

Longtime Family Wealth Report contributor and head of Circulus Group Joe Reilly interviews Paul Edelman, of Edelman Associates, about the business lessons embedded in the Apple TV series Slow Horses.  

They talk about what happens when someone embarrasses the system, how information flows in an organization, and what to do when someone is being quietly moved out of sight. Edelman is a coach and facilitator at Edelman & Associates in Boston – a firm with more than 38 years of experience helping individuals, families, and family businesses to be more effective in achieving their goals.

1. We were talking about the show Slow Horses and how it brilliantly illustrates organizational dynamics. What is Slough House and why does the structure feel so familiar to family enterprises?
In the series, Slough House is where intelligence officers are sent when they’ve embarrassed the system. They haven’t necessarily failed outright, but they’ve become inconvenient. Rather than deal with the underlying issues, the organization moves them out of sight.

Most family enterprises and privately owned companies have some version of this. It may not be a literal office, but there is often a place where people end up when they don’t fit, disappoint expectations, or make others uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s a vague strategic role. Sometimes it’s a “special project.” Sometimes it’s simply exclusion from meaningful decisions.

What makes this dynamic so recognizable is how ordinary it feels. The system doesn’t think of itself as punishing anyone. It thinks it is restoring order. Meetings get easier, tension drops, and the situation appears more manageable.

That move is familiar to almost anyone who has spent time around family boards or leadership groups.

2. Slough House functions as a dumping ground for people who embarrassed the system rather than failed outright. Maybe you could talk a bit about the concept of relegation, and why it is such a common move in families and boards?
Relegation is often the fastest way to reduce visible tension. It removes the person carrying the conflict and gives the system the feeling that something has been handled.

What has really happened is that the system has traded complexity for calm. The underlying issues: unclear authority, competing expectations, unspoken resentments are still present. They are just harder to see.

Everyone has a perspective, and every perspective is incomplete. Once someone is discounted, the system loses access to whatever part of the situation the discounted person was able to see. The range of perspectives narrows, and the picture of reality becomes less complete.

In a family enterprise, this might look like a next-generation member being given a vague title with no real authority after a disagreement with the senior generation. The tension goes down, but the underlying questions about development, expectations, and authority are never worked through.

The same thing happens in boardrooms. A director who asks uncomfortable questions may simply not be re-nominated. The system feels more orderly, but it has quietly given up some of its ability to solve problems that matter.

3. The head of Slough House, Jackson Lamb, (played wonderfully by Gary Oldman) is consistently underestimated because he doesn’t look or behave like a traditional leader. Why do organizations misclassify competence? How does pressure play a role? 
When systems are under pressure, people rely on quick solutions or answers. When the cost of visible failure feels high, organizations gravitate toward reassuring signals: polish, confidence, and status. These cues reduce anxiety in the room. They make leaders feel safer. They also become a shortcut for deciding whose perspective counts.

Competence under pressure often looks different. The most useful people are not always the most presentable. They may raise risks other people would prefer not to name. They may refuse premature closure. In many systems, that gets labeled as “difficult” or “not a fit.”

The show also captures something subtler: under pressure, systems don’t just label information as valid or invalid; they treat people as if they are. Once someone has been discounted, their contributions tend to be discounted with them, even when those contributions are useful. In Slow Horses, the librarian is a small but telling example: not invisible, but relegated to working alone in the basement, easy to overlook, even though she holds access and perspective the system needs. Lamb sees that value when others don’t.

The practical effect is that the system loses access to perspectives it needs. Once a person is discounted, whatever they can see becomes easier to ignore.

The result is that organizations often restore calm by narrowing what they are willing to see. The room becomes easier to manage, but the system becomes less able to construct a useful picture of the situation. And once access to valid information shrinks, problem solving weakens and decisions become more brittle.

4. In the show, the relegated team ends up doing some of the most important problem-solving work. What does that tell us about information flow under pressure and why it breaks down in the first place?
One of the ironies in the show is that the sidelined team ends up doing the most important investigative work, precisely because they are willing to follow threads the main organization would rather ignore.

That isn’t accidental. Under pressure, organizations often constrict information flow. People filter what gets reported upward. They simplify messy situations into defensible narratives. In other words, they manage reputational risk and unpleasant feelings by narrowing what the system is willing to notice. That can restore calm, but it weakens problem solving.

What Slow Horses shows well is that the relegated unit is less bound by those constraints. Because they’re outside the status system, they can chase loose ends, compare inconsistent accounts, reality-test assumptions, and integrate partial perspectives into a more coherent picture. In a threat environment, that work is decisive.

The parallel in family enterprise life is straightforward. The system may sideline the very people who are most able to surface inconvenient information or question prevailing assumptions.

The irony is that those are often the people who would improve decision quality by adding context rather than conflict.

5. What does Slow Horses reveal about how pressure narrows perception and why that matters for boards and families?
It shows how quickly a system can lose access to useful information when the emotional and reputational stakes rise.

Under pressure, people simplify. They filter what they share upward. They avoid facts that could create embarrassment or conflict. They reduce nuance to reduce discomfort. Those moves can feel stabilizing in the short term, and they narrow the system’s contextual understanding at precisely the moment when it needs more.

Once perception narrows, things follow quickly: competence gets misclassified, inconvenient perspectives are dismissed, and decisions are made with an incomplete picture. 

That dynamic is not unique to intelligence services. Boards and families do the same in high-stakes moments, such as succession, ownership transitions, leadership breakdowns, and liquidity events. 

In one family-owned company, a minority shareholder who raised concerns about an underperforming unit was quietly sidelined; the meetings became easier, but the unit was eventually shut down. The risk is that the group becomes calmer and less informed at the same time, and decision quality and durability suffer as a result.

6. If you are the one who has been relegated, what are the most productive moves you can make without becoming “more difficult” in the process?
The first move is internal: separate the insult from the information.

Relegation is degrading. It triggers anger and a desire for vindication. But vindication is rarely the best strategy. A more useful question is: what is this system unable or unwilling to deal with right now.

Second, avoid campaigning. Trying to force the system to “admit you were right” often makes you the story. It’s understandable, and it usually backfires.

Third, build functional alliances quietly. Find one or two people who still value follow-through and reality-testing. Work with them. Stay useful.

And finally, treat your next move as a probe, not a verdict. Choose an action that creates new information. Sometimes you rebuild influence by being the person trusted to improve understanding without escalating conflict. Sometimes you learn the harder truth: the system can’t integrate you. Either way, you gain clarity without turning the situation into a loyalty contest.

7. If you are a sibling or colleague watching someone else get relegated, what helps?  What usually makes it worse?
What helps is to name the dynamic without escalating it.

The common mistake is to turn it into a moral showdown: “How could you do this to her?” That usually triggers defensiveness and coalition behavior. It becomes about loyalty rather than functioning.

A better move is to anchor the conversation in decision quality. Ask practical questions: What problem is this decision trying to solve? What information might we lose? What risks might we be introducing? What outcome are we prioritizing, and what tradeoffs are we ignoring?

You can also support the relegated person privately, in a way that helps them stay strategic rather than reactive.

Silence makes it worse. When everyone knows what is happening, but no one can speak about it, fear spreads. The system learns a lesson: don’t be the person who raises inconvenient questions.

8. What can boards, family councils, and advisors do to keep access to valid information open under pressure, rather than narrowing what the system can see?
The first step is to recognize the tradeoff. Under pressure, the need for calm often overwhelms the need for clarity. The system starts filtering out information that creates discomfort, even when that information is important.

Boards and family councils can counter this by making decision quality the central question. Instead of asking, “How do we make this tension go away?” they can ask, “What information might we be losing? What perspectives are we not hearing? What are we assuming that hasn’t been tested?”

It also helps to separate the person from the information they can offer. Systems under pressure tend to discount both at the same time. Advisors can slow that move down by asking questions that keep the focus on the substance: What is the concern? What part of the situation does this person see? What might we miss if we ignore it?

None of this eliminates tension. It does something more useful. It keeps the system connected to reality at the moment it is most tempted to look away. In the end, the best decisions come from systems that stay connected to reality when the pressure rises.