Cultivated

Portfolio began as a leather case for carrying papers. Where the word came from, how its meaning changed — and what a portfolio really is at work.

When I first started out, I did the obvious thing. I got good at the work in front of me. It didn't take long to notice that being good wasn't enough.

Last night I was at a new community event called The Something More Club. Three talks on running a small business, and beneath all three, the same two themes kept surfacing: human connection, and community.

Progress isn't movement — it's seeing. What stop-motion animation reveals about how your ideas actually become valuable.

It was some time in the mid to late 80s. A café in Bristol, a man sitting alone, and a twelve-year-old with a new notebook writing his first ever note. Thirty years on, that habit became all of this — and now a good part of it goes public.

Organisations often define everything, then define the definitions. Somewhere in the pile, understanding leaves the room. A case for clarity over completeness.

Good teaching is not the transfer of information. It is the creation of understanding.

I bought my copy of Growing a Business second-hand. Inside the cover, in a father's handwriting to his son, was a single line: "To Todd, may this nurture the seed."

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.