Creativity & Climate (Engine)
My middle son apologised for his Christmas ornament before he'd even shown it to us - "it looks like it's been through a fire." I watch grown, capable adults do exactly the same thing in every workshop. On the very human fear of sharing what we make, and the only thing that softens it.
Communication (Wiring)
In the startup, on any given day: customers calling, ops drowning in alerts, execs pinging chat. All of it communication - and all of it affected by noise. On the four kinds of noise, and why your message didn't land.
Learning & Practice (Flywheel)
I own far too many notebooks, and I've downloaded every note-taking app going. On why the tool was never the system — and why a knowledge system that doesn't change your behaviour isn't doing its job.
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
Kitchen tables, rented desks, a damp garden shed that was never quite right. It took me a long time to see the problem wasn't me - it's that some spaces are built for thinking, and some for working. On why deliberate conditions matter, and how to build your own anywhere
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
I'd avoided starting the podcast for over a decade, then gave it one weekend in a tiny, noisy Airbnb. I planned fifty episodes and recorded twenty-three. On fear, constraint, and why a change of place doesn't change who you are - it just leaves you nowhere to hide.
Idea to Value (Physics)
I once walked into a room and found a whiteboard headed "Our Most Hated Customers." On why service is never a department — it's a signal of how the whole organisation is actually built.
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
On noticing as a trainable discipline, how creative practice sharpens it, and the craft of helping others see what you've seen.
Idea to Value (Physics)
I use a children's puzzle to teach leaders about change. It sounds childish — but I have now run this workshop over 700 times, with teams as small as six and groups as large as 140. The pattern is always the same.
Learning & Practice (Flywheel)
There are two ways to learn anything: taking in information, and doing the thing. On why you need both, and why a teacher beside you beats either.
Orientation & Direction (Map)
Time blocking looks like controlling time. Used well, it's the opposite: a way of seeing where your time actually goes
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
Around the year 170, the most powerful man alive sat down and wrote himself a weary note about the difficult people he'd meet that day. The Meditations was never intended as a book - it was a leader's journal.
Idea to Value (Physics)
We admire what design looks like and miss what it does. Design isn't how work looks. It's how work works — and it's how ideas become value.