How to Get Your Talk Accepted (Not Just Submitted)
Reviewers spend their evenings wading through submissions that read like a form got filled in because a form needed filling in. This is how to avoid being one of them.
Idea & Value
How ideas move to value — the gap, the cost, the runway, and the learning. Essays in this layer explore the forces that determine whether our investments of money, time, energy and attention produces outcomes.
What We're Really Managing
Most organisations think they're managing projects, products or people. But what if the thing being managed is the idea — and everything else is infrastructure?
Everyone is trying to release value
A product team had twenty million pounds and until year-end to turn it into something people would pay for. Then two other teams' good work landed on top of theirs — and someone had to choose which value moved first.
When a Meeting Isn't a Meeting
Most meetings that fail aren't badly run. They produce agreement instead of alignment — and the difference between the two is what people do on Thursday.
What writers know about keeping an idea alive
Most organisations say they want to turn ideas into value and rarely manage it. Writers do it for a living. Here's what their craft teaches us about keeping an idea's meaning alive, from seed to shipped work.
A podcast is the whole system in miniature
I was in a room of small business owners when one of them asked me to explain how ideas become value.
The Architecture of Clarity
I thought I was researching old printing presses. Instead I found myself studying operating systems. A journey through the archives of the GPO, Braun, Lufthansa and the BBC — and what they were really building beneath the surface.
Portfolio – a declaration of what deserves your attention
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.
The three ways ideas change (or don't)
Progress isn't movement — it's seeing. What stop-motion animation reveals about how your ideas actually become valuable.
Organisations are not machines
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.
How to lead with curiosity
The meeting moved on. Someone named the problem, proposed the solution, and the room agreed. Six months later, it turns out you were right. On developing curiosity as a practice — whether anyone listens or not.
AI, Interpretation, and the Widening Gap Between Idea and Value
Many organisations replacing people with AI aren't cutting costs — they're moving them, and often widening the gap between their ideas and the value those ideas should generate.