Engine — Creativity & Climate

The word courage comes from the Latin cor — the heart. To listen to what your heart is telling you and to follow it. Not the cinematic version. The quieter, more subversive original meaning. A personal reflection on courage as attention rather than performance.

Ideas don't create value on their own. Artefacts do. A podcast became a poem became a zine. That's how ideas actually travel — and why making something from your thinking is the most important creative act.

Frustration is energy with nowhere to go. Apathy is energy that has already left. One is a signal worth listening to. The other is a warning you may have already missed.

Rory Sutherland has a rare gift for saying uncomfortable truths with warmth and humour. One observation landed hard: creativity is scarce in organisations not because people lack imagination, but because systems quietly discourage it.

I use a lot of paper. Not out of nostalgia. Not out of rebellion against digital tools. I use paper because it changes how I think.

After a keynote last week, someone approached me with feedback that was, shall we say, unvarnished. This happens. There is always someone compelled to offer what I now think of as inflicted help.

I had planned to record this reflection in Budapest, in the hum of the conference hall — that strange mixture of anticipation, nerves, and collective attention. Instead, I found myself doing what I often do: waiting for the perfect moment. There rarely is one.

Management is not execution against a perfect plan. It is the quiet craft of assembling people, tools, and constraints into something that works. This essay explores bricolage — the creative act of building with what you have — and why it sits at the heart of resilient leadership.

A reflection on teaching, attention, and why dullness is a systemic risk in learning environments. Energy, not information, determines whether ideas land.