Engine — Creativity & Climate
Creativity and climate — the conditions that allow good work to happen. Articles in this layer explore environment, energy, creative practice, and what leaders do to make good thinking more likely.
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.
When work or life feels stuck, clarity rarely comes from thinking harder. It comes from asking better questions. These two questions restore agency, belief, and momentum.