The Art of Noticing
On noticing as a trainable discipline, how creative practice sharpens it, and the craft of helping others see what you've seen.
The Puzzle Workshop: A Powerful Way to Teach Business Agility and Leading Change
I use a children's puzzle to teach leaders about change. It sounds childish — but I have now run this workshop over 700 times, with teams as small as six and groups as large as 140. The pattern is always the same.
You still can't play the drums
There are two ways to learn anything: taking in information, and doing the thing. On why you need both, and why a teacher beside you beats either.
The rages were less frequent
Time blocking looks like controlling time. Used well, it's the opposite: a way of seeing where your time actually goes
The emperor's notebook
Around the year 170, the most powerful man alive sat down and wrote himself a weary note about the difficult people he'd meet that day. The Meditations was never intended as a book - it was a leader's journal.
Design is how it works
We admire what design looks like and miss what it does. Design isn't how work looks. It's how work works — and it's how ideas become value.
The person who was already ready
She'd been doing most of the job for a year. They hired someone in over her - the following day she updated her CV.
The helter-skelter that never ends
Sheffield, 6am, a hot coffee and a helter-skelter — and a thought about work. Why the same problems keep coming back, why it's almost never the people, and a few things to try when new faces keep producing the same familiar results.
A nice bottle of champagne and a survey
A company once sent every employee a hamper and champagne just before its engagement survey. The scores were excellent. Then everything went back to normal.
Put your socks on properly
John Wooden’s legacy wasn’t built on winning alone. It was built on behaviour, teaching, and an unwavering belief that how you show up each day matters more than the scoreboard.
The Commonplace Book: Building a Personal Library for Thinking
For many years I have kept a notebook I call my commonplace book. It is not a diary, not a planner, not a system for getting things done. It is a personal library for thinking — a place where ideas wait until they are needed.
A date at the top, and honesty underneath
Journaling on an Iron Age hill fort, wild ponies wandering past. Not a diary of events — a thinking partner, and a leadership one too. On paper over screens, the friction that makes it work, and why an honest map beats a beautiful one.