Engine — Creativity & Climate
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?
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.
Engine — Creativity & Climate
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.
Engine — Creativity & Climate
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.
Engine — Creativity & Climate
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.
Engine — Creativity & Climate
Why Lack of Fun at Work Is a Warning Sign
The meeting ends. People file out. Nobody lingers. There is no laughter, no side conversation that runs a minute too long — just movement from one room to the next. Experienced leaders notice it before they can name it.
Flywheel — Learning & Practice
Why I created the 10 behaviours — and what 15 years of using them taught me
We were scaling fast and the standard hiring playbook wasn't working. Skills alone didn't tell us who would thrive. So we studied the outliers.
Physics — Idea to Value
Mottainai — the finite human resources of time, energy, and attention
Time, energy, and attention — the three finite resources every working life is built from. Many of us spend most of them on things that maybe don't count. Mottainai is the Japanese word for the regret.
Engine — Creativity & Climate
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.
Engine — Creativity & Climate
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.
Engine — Creativity & Climate
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.
Wiring — Communication
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.
Engine — Creativity & Climate
Notes on Seeing, Work, and Life
Clarity. Creativity. Attention. Care. The courage to act on what you already know. These aren't management techniques. They're human ones. A long-form photo essay across eight cities and one recurring pattern.