Here’s something most people don’t know about curling: if the ice were perfectly smooth, the stone wouldn’t glide. It would stop dead. A curling stone has a concave bottom. Place it on a flat, polished surface and it creates a vacuum — a suction effect that kills all momentum. A 20kg granite stone, going nowhere. … Read more
Originally written in 2023, never published, see Note below. I was sitting in a room with about forty people. A large organisation, several hundred developers across multiple teams, running a Scrum of Scrums-style event to surface their biggest impediments. The usual suspects came up — dependencies, unclear requirements, technical debt. But the issue that kept … Read more
The question isn’t whether you’re changing. It’s whether you’re changing fast enough. The manuscript hit 150,000 words before I stopped counting. Too big. A motivated leader doesn’t have time for a 600-page read. They need something they can finish in a single sitting and apply on Monday. So I cut it. Ruthlessly. Down to around … Read more
Your work spans three spaces—doing deep design, leading design teams, and amplifying design thinking. But they all collide on the same problem: the system around you is becoming more turbulent, not less capable. You’re being asked to hold outcomes steady while the organisation becomes more political, more interdependent, more contradictory. Priorities that contradict each other … Read more
What 15 years of ground-level observation reveals about DSO’s real trajectory BOTTOM LINE Published metrics tell one story. Ground-level observation tells another. I’ve watched Bayer’s evolution for over 15 years—close enough to see patterns that analyst reports miss. The signals that predict transformation success or failure aren’t in quarterly earnings. They’re in who stays, who … Read more
Thriving in Turbulence is live on Amazon. Here’s the diagnostic system behind it. Monday morning. Your transformation is three months in. Everyone’s working harder than ever. Standups happen. Retrospectives are religious. You’ve got OKRs, Kanban boards, and detailed roadmaps. Yet delivery is slowing. Dependencies multiply. Your best people look exhausted. Stakeholders escalate to your boss. … Read more