This page is a companion to an essay, Is the CV Still the Best Way to Represent Professional Value? – that first appeared in the Meeting Notes Editor's Letter.
The short version: a CV helps someone compare, LinkedIn helps someone be found, and neither was built to share or tell the whole story. I ponder whether what's missing is a curated, editorial account of your work — what musicians would call a Electronic Press Kit (EPK).
Rather than describe one, I built one.
Below is a worked example using my own work, tuned for a single reader: someone deciding whether to bring me in. The notes in the margin explain each editorial choice as it happens — so you can borrow the structure and make your own choices.
This is not my real Professional Press Kit by the way, but a worked example that could be brought to life.
A curated, editorial account of your work, tuned to one reader and one decision
Cultivated · A Meeting Notes Companion
The Professional
Press Kit
A CV helps someone compare. LinkedIn helps someone find. This is the missing artefact — a curated, editorial account of your work, tuned to one reader and one decision.
Purpose
What decision is your reader trying to make?
Every professional artefact exists to reduce enough uncertainty that someone can confidently say yes. Name the yes before you write a word.
Audience
Who is deciding?
A hiring manager compares. A conference booker takes a chance on one act. A client imagines a working relationship. Different readers, different kits.
Context
What are they deciding under?
Limited time, limited attention, incomplete information — and other options on the table. Curation is a courtesy to all three.
What follows is a worked example, using my own work, tuned for one reader: someone deciding whether to bring me in to help their organisation turn ideas into value.
Change the audience and everything changes — a conference booker would see different case studies, different evidence, a different “why now”. The structure holds. The choices don’t. The notes in the margin explain each choice as it happens.
The example · Tuned for: a consulting client
Rob Lambert
I help companies shrink the gap between idea and value.
Portrait —
one photograph,
taken well
one photograph,
taken well
The heroOne sentence, one claim. Its only job is to answer the reader’s first question: is this person relevant to my decision? Then three doors, not ten.
The Story · A one-minute read
I’ve spent my working life on a single question: whether an idea becomes the value it should — and whether it’s good to be part of the work that gets it there.
I’ve chased that question as a senior leader of Engineering, growing a startup from six engineers to more than two hundred on its way to a £400 million exit. I’ve chased it as a VP of HR, responsible for the people systems that decide how work actually feels. I've chased it later as a Vice President of Technology turning around a team of 150 and getting them on the right path. And it started earlier than both, in a degree in Media Science — the study of communication, which turned out to be the study of everything in our workplaces.
Today I run Cultivated, a publishing practice about how good work happens inside organisations. I write, teach and — selectively — consult on the same ideas I publish.
The Japanese have a word for what drives all of it: mottainai — a reverence for worth, the regret of wasted potential. Cultivated exists because I can’t stop noticing what’s possible.
The storyNot a biography. Who you are, what you care about, why you do this — in the time it takes to pour a coffee. If a detail doesn’t serve the reader’s decision, it doesn’t make the cut.
The Sections That Follow
Everything from here is organised around the questions already in the reader’s head — not around categories like “Experience” or “Projects”. Can this person do the work? How does this person think? Can I trust this person? What is this person like to work with? And why now?
The frameSections named for the reader’s questions, not the author’s categories. This single move is what separates a press kit from a profile.
Question One
Can this person do the work?
Scaling without losing the plot · SaaS scale-up
As a senior leader in Technology I helped grow the team from six people to more than two hundred, while the release cycle came down from fourteen months to weekly. The headcount is the least interesting number. The real work was communication — designing how two hundred people stay aligned on what value looks like, week after week.
Idea to value at enterprise scale · Global enterprise
A consulting engagement helping a tech function connect its work to the business it serves. The outcome: a 67% efficiency uplift and a way of working adopted by more than 16,000 staff. Proof the ideas travel well beyond the room they start in.
The other side of the equation · VP of HR
I’ve also run the people system itself — hiring, development, and the conditions under which good work happens. Most advisers have seen the org chart or the delivery pipeline. I’ve been accountable for both, and that changes what you notice.
Case studiesThree, not thirty. One paragraph each. And each chosen for this reader — a conference booker would get three different stories told for a different yes.
Question Two
How do they think?
Essay
The Impact Ladder
How communication multiplies a career at every level, from contributor to creator. The best single map of how I see career growth and communication as synonymous.
Essay
Mottainai
The idea underneath everything here — a reverence for worth, and for what work could become.
Guidebook
The Idea to Value System
Five layers for seeing how ideas move through an organisation. The method beneath the writing. A place to land what you see when you pay attention to how ideas move.
Podcast
Stationery Freaks
Thinking about potential through paper and pens, with my co-host Helen. Evidence I don’t take tools more seriously than thinking.
Talks
Two keynotes, recorded
One on how ideas become value; one on communication as the working superpower. Twenty minutes each — enough to hear how I teach.
CurationFive pieces, each with a line saying why it’s here. The gloss is the point — visible evidence that someone edited. Without it, this is just a shorter LinkedIn.
Question Three
Can I trust them?
“[A named quote from a client, describing the project and what changed. One of these is worth a wall of logos.]”— Name, role, organisation
“[A second, from a different kind of work — breadth of trust, not volume of praise.]”— Name, role, organisation
Books
Zero to Keynote · Take a Day Off · 10 Behaviours of Effective Employees · Workshop Mastery
Speaking & Teaching
Keynotes and workshops across Europe; courses on communication and the Idea to Value system, taught to teams and individuals.
TrustSpecific beats impressive. A named person describing a real outcome reduces more uncertainty than any client-logo wall ever has.
Question Four
What are they like to work with?
Communication first. Most problems in business are communication related.
I teach as I work. The aim is to leave capability behind, not to create dependence on me.
Plain language, in the open. You will always know what I think and why — on paper, in plain English.
Selective by design. Consulting stays deliberately capped, so every engagement gets the attention it deserves.
The relationshipQuiet but load-bearing: this is where the reader starts imagining the working relationship before the first call.
Question Five
Why now?
I’m currently developing the Idea to Value guidebook and course, and writing Meeting Notes, a weekly letter on how good work happens. I’m taking a small number of consulting engagements from autumn 2026. If your organisation is full of good ideas that deserve to become more, I’d love to hear about them.
Why nowThe most useful section and the fastest to go stale. A press kit is a living editorial product — a dead “why now” quietly undermines everything above it.
A companion to the Meeting Notes essay on the professional press kit. The structure is yours to borrow — the choices have to be yours.
The evidenceThe CV isn’t replaced. It’s housed — filed here beneath the editorial layer that gives it meaning.
This idea was first shared in the Meeting Notes Editor's Letter - you can find out more about Meeting Notes here. Always an easy unsubscribe.