When a good idea isn't enough
Most ideas don't stall because they're wrong. They stall because they never created value for the listener — and there's a small shift that changes how a room responds.
Thinking about the gap between action and knowing - Meeting Notes
Six meetings to buy broadband
Ten executives spent six meetings deciding a thousand-pound broadband upgrade. On why debate without evidence is cost — and the smallest test is the fastest path forward.
Remaining Relevant in a Changing Job Market
At a conference, a senior engineer told me he couldn't find a good job. Twenty minutes later, a hiring manager told me she couldn't find good people. They were both right, and they were describing the same problem from opposite sides.
Meet Dave - a response to the stick
A leader once ended a call saying she wanted "a stick to hit them with." On ranking teams, gaming the numbers, and why a team's metrics are a mirror — not a lever.
The four types of value
The question is not whether something is a cost. Everything requires investment. The question is whether that investment moves the organisation closer to creating something valuable.
Turning around a struggling team — a six-stage approach
Most struggling teams are not suffering from a lack of activity. They are suffering from a lack of understanding. Before you change anything, you need to see it clearly. This is the approach I have used — and coached others in — for turning around struggling teams.
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.
The Subtotal Button — What a Supermarket Checkout Taught Me About Metrics
In the summer of 1996, I discovered a button that paused the performance clock. Within weeks I was the fastest checkout operator in the West of Sheffield, then the company. Productivity, according to the numbers, had exploded. Cash in the bank had not.
The new player at the table
Every new player slows the poker game while everyone re-explains the rules. Plenty of workplaces run the same way — on why stable teams compound, and why you flow work to teams, not teams to work.
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.
Everything between idea and value is cost — the solo creator's central problem
Most people aren't short of ideas — they run out of runway before the idea pays back. A canonical Cultivated essay for solo creators, makers, and independent builders on the gap between idea and value, and why everything inside it is cost.