Idea to Value (Physics)
Six meetings to buy broadband
Ten executives spent six meetings deciding a thousand-pound broadband upgrade. On why debate without evidence is cost — and the smallest test is the fastest path forward.
Idea to Value (Physics)
How ideas move to value — the gap, the cost, the runway, and the learning. Articles in this layer explore the systemic forces that determine whether investment produces outcomes.
Idea to Value (Physics)
The four types of value
The question is not whether something is a cost. Everything requires investment. The question is whether that investment moves the organisation closer to creating something valuable.
Orientation & Direction (Map)
Turning around a struggling team — a six-stage approach
Most struggling teams are not suffering from a lack of activity. They are suffering from a lack of understanding. Before you change anything, you need to see it clearly. This is the approach I have used — and coached others in — for turning around struggling teams.
Idea to Value (Physics)
The Subtotal Button — What a Supermarket Checkout Taught Me About Metrics
In the summer of 1996, I discovered a button that paused the performance clock. Within weeks I was the fastest checkout operator in the West of Sheffield, then the company. Productivity, according to the numbers, had exploded. Cash in the bank had not.
solo creator
Everything between idea and value is cost — the solo creator's central problem
Most people aren't short of ideas — they run out of runway before the idea pays back. A canonical Cultivated essay for solo creators, makers, and independent builders on the gap between idea and value, and why everything inside it is cost.
Idea to Value (Physics)
No More Cowboys
I spent the better part of a year planning "No More Cowboys" before Checkatrade beat me to it. On why planning feels safe, only doing reveals the truth, and the very good plan beats the best one.
Idea to Value (Physics)
A sartorial disaster
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.
Idea to Value (Physics)
The oversized crisp
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.
Idea to Value (Physics)
A 1944 sabotage manual that looks suspiciously like modern work
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.
Communication (Wiring)
Editorial Space vs Attention Space: Why Less Communication Is More Effective
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.
Orientation & Direction (Map)
Competing Priorities: The Hidden Cost of Misalignment at Work
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.
Orientation & Direction (Map)
Objects and Models: Why Work Never Matches the Diagram
Plans, roadmaps, org charts — these are necessary objects. But the object is not the work. A thoughtful exploration of why leadership means staying close to reality rather than defending the model.