Cultivated is a body of writing about how ideas become value inside organisations — and how people grow through the work of getting them there. Twenty years of practice, distilled into a system, a catalogue of books, and over two hundred essays.
Start with any layer of the system below. Or browse the full archive.
How the work is organised
The five layers below are the structural spine of the body of work. Each one is a domain — and each one has a tag in the archive that gathers every piece of writing that sits within it. Pick the layer that matches what you're working on.
Map
Orientation
Direction begins with clarity. See where you are, imagine what could be, and understand the gap between.
Read the Map writing →Physics
Idea to Value
Ideas begin wide and uncertain. Through investment, creation, and delivery, they narrow into something valuable.
Read the Physics writing →Wiring
Communication
Meaning travels through aligned communication. When alignment breaks, it distorts meaning.
Read the Wiring writing →Engine
Creativity & Climate
The conditions that let good work happen. Creativity emerges when those conditions align.
Read the Engine writing →Flywheel
Learning & Practice
Learning compounds through practice, structure, and connection.
Read the Flywheel writing →Where to start
The pieces below are the anchors — the ones that introduce the central arguments, or that readers most often return to.
Physics — Idea to Value
Financial value is external
The four types of value most organisations confuse — and why only one of them actually funds the others.
Read the essay → Engine — Creativity & ClimateCreativity is a climate problem
Creativity is not a personality trait. It is a result of the conditions around the work. Change the climate, and you change what becomes possible.
Read the essay → Physics — Idea to ValueWatermelon reporting
Green on the outside, red on the inside. Why so much organisational reporting hides the truth — and what to do about it.
Read the essay → Flywheel — Learning & PracticeThe Impact Ladder
Four levels of career growth — contributor, manager, systemic thinker, creative — with communication as the multiplier at every level.
Read the essay → Wiring — CommunicationPrinciples of effective communication
The foundational principles that determine whether meaning actually travels — and why almost every organisational problem is, underneath, a communication problem.
Read the essay → Map — OrientationMottainai — a philosophy for avoiding waste
A Japanese principle for treating resources, time, and human effort with the respect they deserve. A quiet argument against the assumption that more is always better.
Read the essay →Free books and guides
Written to be useful in themselves, given freely as part of the practice. Each one stands alone — read in an afternoon, return to as needed.
Field guide
Map
Personal Alignment Field Guide
A working tool for noticing the gap between who you are and what you do — and correcting it.
Explore →
Essay
Map
Notes on Seeing, Work and Life
A long-form photo essay across eight cities on clarity, creativity, attention, and the art of seeing clearly.
Explore →
Free book
Map
Remaining Relevant and Employable
The original 2015 book on taking ownership of your career. Preserved as a legacy piece — the current version lives as an essay.
Explore →
Field guide
Physics
Tech Portfolio Field Guide
A practical tool for seeing where investment, effort, and risk sit across a technology portfolio — and where they should.
Explore →
Free chapter
Wiring
Generate Talk Ideas
A free chapter from Zero to Keynote on finding the ideas that deserve to become talks — and recognising the ones that don't.
Explore →
Field guide
Wiring
Survive a Conference
A practical guide for getting real value out of conferences — without the burnout, the small talk fatigue, or the regret on the train home.
Explore →
Essay
Engine
Meditations on Management
A long essay on what it actually takes to grow as a manager — and the conditions that make growth possible or impossible.
Explore →
Novella
Engine
Diary of a Manager
A short funny novella on the strange, chaotic, and sometimes absurd reality of modern management life.
Explore →
Free book
Engine
Join Our Company
A book on hiring and onboarding the kind of people who'll actually thrive — and building the conditions for them to do so.
Explore →
Practice guide
Engine
30 Days of Creativity
A month of small daily prompts for building a creative practice — one observation, one note, one small act of attention at a time.
Explore →Books and courses from the practice
Longer-form works. Some are books. Some are courses. Some are both. Each one is the definitive treatment of a single topic in the body of work — written for the people who want to take a specific capability further.
Guidebook + Course
From £19.99
The Idea to Value System
The full canonical treatment — the system, the flow, the four types of value, and the twenty-six principles. The most complete version of the body of work in one place.
See the work →
Online course
£21.99
Communication Superpower
A long course on how meaning actually travels between people — and how to stop accidentally distorting it. Conference award-winning, used inside teams and one-to-one alike.
See the course →
Book — digital & print
From £9.99
Zero to Keynote
A practical book on building talks that land — from finding the idea worth telling, through writing and rehearsing, to standing on the stage and making it count.
See the book →
Book
£14.99
Workshop Mastery
A book on designing workshops that actually change how people work — not events, not theatre, but learning experiences that hold up the morning after.
See the book →
Field guide
£5.99
From Idea to Sustainable Work
The Solo Creator Guide. The Idea to Value system applied to independent work — writers, makers, consultants, coaches, anyone building something on their own.
See the guide →
Book — digital & print
From £9.99
Take a Day Off
A quieter book on rest, attention, and the strange cost of always being on. Less a productivity argument than a quiet rebellion against the assumption that more is better.
See the book →
Free eBook + workbook
Free / £12.99
The 10 Behaviours of Effective Employees
A shared language for what good actually looks like at work — the behaviours that build trust, clarity, and momentum, and how to develop them in yourself and others.
See the work →Recent writing
Recent
·
Physics
The shift from projects to products is real — and it's not just a renaming exercise
Why so many organisations rebrand projects as products without changing how the work actually flows — and what the genuine shift looks like when it lands.
Recent
·
Map
Quarterly review, already six months late
A reflection on how organisational rhythms drift out of phase with the work they're meant to govern — and the slow cost of that misalignment.
Recent
·
Wiring
Idea to value, the communication principle
Almost every problem in the messy middle between idea and value turns out to be a communication problem in disguise. A closer look at why.
Recent
·
Physics
Stop debating, start testing
When opinions in the room can't agree, the problem is usually that the question isn't really an opinion question. A short piece on testing as the way through.
Browse all 200+ articles →
The full archive, nearly two decades of writing.
New to the work?
Start with the orientation
The 21-minute orientation walks through the Idea to Value system in a single sitting, and arrives the moment you sign up to Meeting Notes — the weekly letter where the thinking continues.
Get the orientation →