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.
I set out to post one small idea about creativity every day for a month. LinkedIn killed it on day six. Here are the thirty that survived — free to read.
Months into a startup doubling year on year, the team was tiring in the messy middle. So I bought posh biscuits and ran a very different kind of workshop. On Appreciative Inquiry, and the discipline of studying success.
My middle son apologised for his Christmas ornament before he'd even shown it to us - "it looks like it's been through a fire." I watch grown, capable adults do exactly the same thing in every workshop. On the very human fear of sharing what we make, and the only thing that softens it.
Kitchen tables, rented desks, a damp garden shed that was never quite right. It took me a long time to see the problem wasn't me - it's that some spaces are built for thinking, and some for working. On why deliberate conditions matter, and how to build your own anywhere
I'd avoided starting the podcast for over a decade, then gave it one weekend in a tiny, noisy Airbnb. I planned fifty episodes and recorded twenty-three. On fear, constraint, and why a change of place doesn't change who you are - it just leaves you nowhere to hide.
On noticing as a trainable discipline, how creative practice sharpens it, and the craft of helping others see what you've seen.
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.
She'd been doing most of the job for a year. They hired someone in over her - the following day she updated her CV.
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.