Creativity & Climate (Engine)
Organisations are not machines
We borrowed our language for organisations from the factory floor. But the parts that decide whether good work happens are the parts no machine can see.
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
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.
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
The anti-role model
We give a great deal of attention to the people we want to be like. The people we'd hate to become are teaching us something too — if we choose to look.
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
You are more than your job
It's 3pm on a Tuesday. The meeting isn't terrible. The job isn't terrible. But a small voice keeps appearing: is this really all of me?
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
Being an Amateur
We often use amateur as an insult at work. But the word comes from the Latin for lover — and Vivian Maier's story shows exactly why that matters.
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
The conditions behind great creative work
For creativity to emerge it typically needs a different question: how do we discover what might be possible? That requires different conditions. Less friction. More trust. More room for work that can't yet prove its value in a spreadsheet.
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
How learning to see is the art of generating ideas (Word at Work)
We use the word idea casually. But it traces back to a Greek verb meaning to see — and that changes how we understand what ideas actually are, and where they come from.
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
Don't take the job
Fun at work isn't a perk or a Friday-afternoon extra. Read properly, it's the earliest signal you have of a team's health — a barometer that moves long before the dashboards do.
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
Mottainai - The most hopeful word I know
Usually read as the regret of waste, mottainai points somewhere more hopeful: the time, energy and attention we bring to work were never a cost — they're potential, backed.
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
Creativity Is a Climate Problem - Why Leadership Isn't About Ideas
Creativity isn't a talent problem. It's a climate problem. Five conditions consistently show up in environments where creativity actually flows — not as theory, but as reality.
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
The weight of work without reason
Work becomes heavy when it loses its reason. This piece explores why connecting investment to value — a core idea in portfolio thinking — brings clarity, learning, and better decisions.
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
The Cheap Pen That Changed How I Think
A simple calligraphy pen introduced friction, boundaries, and intention into my thinking — not through optimisation, but through boundaries, surface and friction.
Communication (Wiring)
Bravery and Conformity — A Behaviour That Shapes Organisational Culture
The opposite of bravery is not cowardice — it is conformity. In organisations, conformity is often the default. A practical exploration of bravery as a quiet, consequential organisational behaviour.