Creativity & Climate (Engine)
A nice bottle of champagne and a survey
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.
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Creativity & Climate (Engine)
Put your socks on properly
John Wooden’s legacy wasn’t built on winning alone. It was built on behaviour, teaching, and an unwavering belief that how you show up each day matters more than the scoreboard.
Learning & Practice (Flywheel)
The Commonplace Book: Building a Personal Library for Thinking
For many years I have kept a notebook I call my commonplace book. It is not a diary, not a planner, not a system for getting things done. It is a personal library for thinking — a place where ideas wait until they are needed.
Learning & Practice (Flywheel)
A date at the top, and honesty underneath
Journaling on an Iron Age hill fort, wild ponies wandering past. Not a diary of events — a thinking partner, and a leadership one too. On paper over screens, the friction that makes it work, and why an honest map beats a beautiful one.
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
Hire Slowly, Fire Fast
"Hire fast, fire fast" sounds bold, but it gambles with people's lives. Why the more humane, harder standard — hire slowly, fire fast — builds stronger teams.
Learning & Practice (Flywheel)
Some books are to be chewed
A Winchester bookshop with more books than a life could read. The point was never the reading, or the summary - it's the chewing. My personal knowledge system, in four stages: capture, curate, crunch, contribute.
Creativity & Climate (Engine)
Over peanuts and beer.
I had a beer with a friend whose company was rotten to the core. A month later he was a different man — one new leader had cancelled every change programme and simply held a line. On why culture is cultivated, not announced.
Orientation & Direction (Map)
Nobody had an answer
I joined a community group that met, discussed, minuted and solved precisely nothing. On the one question that fixed it — and the three that follow — none of which needs a single new tool.
Learning & Practice (Flywheel)
Malcolm knew everything
I once worked with a man who was an expert at everything and had done none of it. On why most training leaves people knowing more and doing exactly the same — and what actually changes behaviour.
Idea to Value (Physics)
I believe you have my stapler
A specialist lost the whole room in seven Japanese words. On a plainer instruction: staple yourself to a piece of work, follow it through the building, and map what actually happens — not what's meant to.
Learning & Practice (Flywheel)
Notes Are for Thinking
Good note-taking is not about recording the past. It is a tool for thinking in the present — shaping attention, learning, and judgment as work unfolds.
Idea to Value (Physics)
Nice notebook, shame about the method
Why every productivity system — a bullet journal, a to-do list, a huge platform — is just a container and rules.