Creativity & Climate (Engine)
Creativity and climate — the conditions that allow good work to happen. Articles in this layer explore environment, energy, creative practice, and what leaders do to make good thinking more likely.
A garden in January looks dead. It isn't. Nor is the unfinished idea you can't quite let go of. On wintering — and why the ideas that keep coming back are usually the ones worth listening to.
The word courage comes from the Latin cor — the heart. To listen to what your heart is telling you and to follow it. Not the cinematic version. The quieter, more subversive original meaning. A personal reflection on courage as attention rather than performance.
Ideas don't create value on their own. Artefacts do. A podcast became a poem became a zine.
Frustration is energy with nowhere to go. Apathy is energy that has already left. One is a signal worth listening to. The other is a warning you may have already missed.
Rory Sutherland has a rare gift for saying uncomfortable truths with warmth and humour. One observation landed hard: creativity is scarce in organisations not because people lack imagination, but because systems quietly discourage it.
I use a lot of paper. Not out of nostalgia. Not out of rebellion against digital tools. I use paper because it changes how I think.
After a keynote last week, someone approached me with feedback that was, shall we say, unvarnished. This happens. There is always someone compelled to offer what I now think of as inflicted help.
A keynote is not a performance. It is an act of value creation — where a distilled idea meets scarce attention. How to design a talk that earns what the audience gives.
Management is not execution against a perfect plan. It is the quiet craft of assembling people, tools, and constraints into something that works. This essay explores bricolage — the creative act of building with what you have — and why it sits at the heart of resilient leadership.