Was it worth it?
On why we confuse shipping with value, and the three questions Henry James asked of any work - the last of which almost nobody asks.
The answer was on the table
On the PO method, lateral thinking, and why creativity was never a gift some people have. It's a device you can pick up off the nearest surface.
LinkedIn is terrible for newsletters
I set out to post one small idea about creativity every day for a month. LinkedIn killed it on day six. Here are the thirty that survived — free to read.
Amplify, don't just fix
Months into a startup doubling year on year, the team was tiring in the messy middle. So I bought posh biscuits and ran a very different kind of workshop. On Appreciative Inquiry, and the discipline of studying success.
No matter how nice the font
On business storytelling, and why facts inform but stories orient.
Cornell Note-Taking Method: Boring but effective
I discovered the Cornell Note-Taking Method over a decade ago and promptly ignored it. It sounded dull and academic. Then I tried it properly. I have not really stopped since.
They turned off the heating
For our anniversary, our local pub had just been told to cut costs by any means necessary. So they'd turned off the heating - one thing everyone was paying for. I got to watch a business raise its costs by trying to lower them, in real time, over a burnt lasagna.
It looks like it's been through a fire
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.
The system had fallen over
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.
A room at the end of the garden
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
The tiny, noisy, perfect Airbnb
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.
The most hated customers
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.