Learning & Practice (Flywheel)

The three areas of learning — and the one very few people invest in

When I first started out, I did the obvious thing. I got good at the work in front of me. It didn't take long to notice that being good wasn't enough.

Creativity & Climate (Engine)

Putting the human back into the work

Last night I was at a new community event called The Something More Club. Three talks on running a small business, and beneath all three, the same two themes kept surfacing: human connection, and community.

Idea to Value (Physics)

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.

Learning & Practice (Flywheel)

The Public Commonplace Project

It was some time in the mid to late 80s. A café in Bristol, a man sitting alone, and a twelve-year-old with a new notebook writing his first ever note. Thirty years on, that habit became all of this — and now a good part of it goes public.

Communication (Wiring)

The more we define, the less we understand

Organisations often define everything, then define the definitions. Somewhere in the pile, understanding leaves the room. A case for clarity over completeness.

Learning & Practice (Flywheel)

Good teaching is the creation of understanding

Good teaching is not the transfer of information. It is the creation of understanding.

Creativity & Climate (Engine)

The Word at Work: Cultivate

I bought my copy of Growing a Business second-hand. Inside the cover, in a father's handwriting to his son, was a single line: "To Todd, may this nurture the seed."

Creativity & Climate (Engine)

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.

Creativity & Climate (Engine)

The anti-role model

We give a great deal of attention to the people we want to be like. The people we'd hate to become are teaching us something too — if we choose to look.

Creativity & Climate (Engine)

You are more than your job

It's 3pm on a Tuesday. The meeting isn't terrible. The job isn't terrible. But a small voice keeps appearing: is this really all of me?

Creativity & Climate (Engine)

Being an Amateur

We often use amateur as an insult at work. But the word comes from the Latin for lover — and Vivian Maier's story shows exactly why that matters.

Learning & Practice (Flywheel)

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.