Before there were feeds, there were lists
On making A List of Good Things, a free printed catalogue inspired by Victorian circulars, and why a recommendation that costs something means more.
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.
Pinned, not fixed
Tilt an old cork board towards the window and it's covered in holes. It might be the best monument we have to changing your mind.
A man called Obvious
One of the most useful business books I know is about eighty pages long, was first published in 1916, and spends a remarkable amount of writing on tinned peaches. On Obvious Adams, learning to see, and five tests for the obvious.
The wrong thing, beautifully done
Be effective first at achieving your purpose. Then be efficient — because there's little joy in making the wrong thing faster. All you've done is reach the wrong place a little sooner.
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.
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.