2010–2025
The Archive
Fifteen years of public thinking — the development of CIRCA-CLEAR, published in real conditions as it happened.
Most consulting methodology arrives fully formed. The framework is presented as a finished system with no visible development history, no record of the wrong turns, no documentation of what the thinking was before it converged. That’s a cleaner story. It’s also a less honest one.
The archive is the working. Over 200 posts from 2010 to 2025, covering the evolution from Agile practice to diagnostic recovery methodology. It’s not a clean linear journey. Positions shift. Earlier posts use vocabulary that later posts replace. Some of the thinking that became CIRCA-CLEAR is present in embryonic form years before it was named. That development is visible in the archive because it was published as it happened — tested publicly, challenged by practitioners, refined through application.
For practitioners interested in the methodology, the archive is the extended working. For leaders doing due diligence, it’s evidence that the framework wasn’t invented for the book.
New writing is published on Substack. The archive covers 2010–2025.
The thinking in this archive developed into Thriving in Turbulence and the CIRCA-CLEAR diagnostic framework. If you’re new here, the book is the better starting point.
See the book →Where to start
Selected from the archive
Posts that represent the development of the core ideas — not the most recent, but the most formative.
Diagnostic Triage
Why the same method produces different outcomes
The earliest version of what became the CIRCA-CLEAR diagnostic argument — that identical symptoms indicate different conditions requiring different responses.
Frameworks & Conditions
Frameworks carry their conditions of origin
Why importing a methodology wholesale from a different context creates friction rather than improvement — and how to read the conditions a framework was built for.
Adaptation Debt
The capacity that erodes while you deliver
The early development of adaptation debt — the concept that became Book 0 in the series, written in dialogue with Ward Cunningham.
Transformation Recovery
When governance becomes the problem
On the pattern of organisations adding governance infrastructure to programmes where the actual condition is trust deficit — and why it compounds rather than resolves.
Capacity & Flow
Slowing intake to speed throughput
The counterintuitive logic of WIP constraints — why constraining the start rate accelerates the finish rate, and why organisations resist the intervention that fixes the problem.
Pattern Recognition
The real conversations happen after the meeting
On Insecure conditions and the trust deficit that causes problems to hide until they become crises — and why more meetings make it worse.
Browse by theme
Six content pillars
The archive organised by the themes that run through the work. These correspond to the category structure in WordPress — update category slugs to match.
Pillar 1
Transformation Recovery
Diagnosing and recovering stalled programmes — the core of the practice.
Pillar 2
Adaptation Debt
The invisible liability that compounds while organisations appear to function.
Pillar 3
Diagnostic Triage
CIRCA-CLEAR applied — identifying conditions, matching responses, sequencing interventions.
Pillar 4
Frameworks & Conditions
Why frameworks carry their conditions of origin and what to do about it.
Pillar 5
Capacity & Flow
WIP, throughput, lead time — the mechanics of why organisations drown while working harder.
Pillar 6
Pattern Recognition
Boot room briefings — reading what’s actually happening rather than what the dashboard shows.
The complete record
All 200+ posts, reverse chronological
The full archive in reverse chronological order — from the most recent pre-Substack posts back to 2010. Search and category filters available within the archive.
Browse the full archive →What came next
The archive ends where Substack begins
New writing — post-publication thinking, current diagnostic patterns, and the development of Adaptation Debt — is published on Substack since November 2025. The archive documents how the thinking developed. Substack documents where it’s going.