Leadership and Work in Practice

Every new player slows the poker game while everyone re-explains the rules. Plenty of workplaces run the same way — on why stable teams compound, and why you flow work to teams, not teams to work.

Aged thirteen, I had NBA dreams and a basketball team that finished third of three. On the question everyone skips when chasing something ambitious — is this the team to get it done?

I'm a sartorial disaster. My friend wasn't — and when strangers asked him to make their clothes, he leapt without once weighing the problems that came with it. On the two sides of every coin, and when not to turn it over.

The summer I worked in a snack packing factory, the hopper filtered out everything that didn't fit — without once checking who'd dropped it in. On why most organisations can't.

Lost in the Leeds suburbs, I asked a man the way to Horsforth. "I wouldn't start from here," he said. On why knowing where you actually stand is the hardest, bravest step toward where you want to go.

In 1944, the OSS published a manual on how to quietly sabotage organisations. Eighty years later, many of its tactics have become standard corporate practice. Read it and you'll recognise your own workplace.

Editorial space is infinite. Attention space is scarce. Most organisations get this backwards — publishing more content and creating less understanding. A practical case for designing communication for human attention rather than organisational efficiency.

A five-part spine for writing a change narrative people can see themselves in - plus free edition of The Department of Interesting Things, the canvas, templates and workshop guide.

When everything is urgent, urgency loses meaning. A practical exploration of the hidden human cost of competing priorities — how misalignment converts effort into exhaustion, and why clarity is an act of care rather than a management technique.