Start Here
Practical writing, field guides, workshops and talks for people who care about their work and want their ideas to become real value. Start here.
Better work begins with better seeing.
For people who care about their work and want to make more of it.
Cultivated is practical writing, field guides, workshops and talks about making good work better.
How do you take an idea and make it useful? Turn knowledge into something other people can understand? Create the space for good work to happen? Spend less of your time on things that don't matter?
Cultivated is a place to explore those questions — with ideas you can use, things you can try, and ways of seeing your work differently.
Sometimes that means an idea gets further. Sometimes a complicated thing suddenly becomes clear. Sometimes you discover a better way to spend your Tuesday.
It starts small — one essay, one idea, one useful shift — and goes as deep as you like.
Find your way in
You don't need to understand all of Cultivated before you start. There is quite a lot in here.
Just pick the thing that sounds most like what you're looking for.
I want to read something
Writing
More than 200 essays, observations and field notes about work, ideas, attention, communication, creativity and how to turn ideas into something valuable in work.
Some begin with a notebook, a shop or a bad meeting. Most take five minutes, and you'll notice something different at work the next day.
I want to learn something
Field Guides & Courses
Field Guides, books and practical courses for turning ideas into value, communicating better, taking a day off, landing a talk, running a workshop and doing more meaningful work.
Short enough to finish in an evening or a weekend. Practical enough to use on Monday. Interesting enough that they don't feel like homework.
Explore Field Guides & Courses →
I have something I'm wrestling with
Office Hours
One hour. One work problem. A fresh pair of eyes.
Bring an idea, a piece of work, a difficult conversation, a presentation, a project, a decision – or simply something that isn't quite working.
We'll spend an hour looking at it properly.
No six-week programme. No homework. No coaching workbook.
Just you, me and the thing.
£180 · 60 minutes · Online
I don't have a magic answer for every problem. What I do have is a lot of experience looking at complicated things from different angles.
That's what you're buying: an hour of attention, experience and another pair of eyes.
I want to bring this into my organisation
If you're sharing this with whoever holds the budget: a talk gives a room a new way of seeing their work in under an hour. A workshop gives a team a day to apply it to their own work, and something they'll use the next morning.
Talks
Ideas worth putting in a room. Talks about attention, ideas, communication, work and what happens between having a good idea and making it useful.
Workshops
A little less sitting and more putting information into action. Always practical, always making something, always useful the following day.
Workshops for teams who want to make something clearer, better or more useful – from ideas and communication to talks, collaboration, creative constraints and the way work actually gets done.
Advisory
Sometimes you don't need a programme. You need another mind in the room.
Selective advisory work for people dealing with something interesting, exciting and complicated: a change, an idea, a problem, a decision or a piece of work that needs looking at from a different angle.
I want to spend more time here
The Studio
A membership for curious people who want to make work better.
The Studio is where the wider Cultivated practice comes together.
Members get access to the Department of Interesting Things letter, a growing library of essays, Field Guides, books, seminars, films, conversations and experiments – alongside new work as it is made.
It's less like a content subscription and more like having a little independent ideas publisher in your pocket. It also helps to keep the vast library of other work free.
£5 a month · £50 a year
Why this matters
Most of us have to work. It's a big part of life, and the time, energy and attention we bring to it are limited. Unlike money, you can't make more of them.
So it's worth spending them on work that becomes something. The Japanese word mottainai captures it: respect for value that hasn't been realised yet, including your own effort. The longer version →
About Rob
I'm Rob Lambert. Journalist and filmmaker, twice a VP of Engineering, then VP of HR, now a writer and teacher. Twenty-odd years of looking at how work actually gets done and helping good ideas get somewhere. More about Rob →
If you only do three things
Read something.
Start with the writing.
Learn something.
Have a look through the Field Guides & Courses.
Bring something.
If you've got a problem, idea or piece of work you'd like another pair of eyes on, try Office Hours.
You don't need to follow a path. Read something, try something, and if it turns out to be useful, that's the whole idea.
— Rob
Value beyond profit
Five percent of profit from the books, courses and membership is given each year to Naomi House — the hospice caring for life-limited children and their families. Because every system should create value beyond profit.