Words
The Sunday Dispatches archive...
What's a conversation with you like?
What's a conversation with you like? Someone asked me this week. Here's what I told them: My clients are practical, action-oriented people. They have tough decisions to make. Often under pressure. My role is to help them think differently about what's in front
What exactly does a quarterly meeting look like?
What exactly does a quarterly meeting look like? Just us in conversation. Your agenda. Not mine 2-3 things you want to discuss. Look from different angles. Peel back the layers. Test ideas. Challenge thinking. Push where it counts. Someone said to me I knew immediately this wasn't
The Weekly Reframe #1
1/ Notice Achieving a stretch goal creates momentum. I've noticed this pattern in my own life: Set a challenging goal. First attempt, make some progress. That success makes me more likely to try again. Second attempt, I might actually succeed. If I do then the third time I
The smartest person in the room is the room.
“The smartest person in the room is the room.” David Weinberger wrote that in 2012. His point was simple: groups think better than individuals. I’ve seen that as a facilitator. But things changed when AI walked in. AI can store more. Process more. Recall more. So now the “room”
You’ve done well.But here’s the truth you’re avoiding.
You’ve done well. But here’s the truth you’re avoiding: You followed the playbooks. The best practices. The frameworks. The “this is how it’s done.” And it worked… until it didn’t. You built something real. But now you’ve hit a ceiling— and you can’t
Learn to ask hard questions.
Learn to ask hard questions; there’s often more underneath. A lesson I’ve learnt coaching consultancy business developers. What do hard questions look like? ↳ Simple. ↳ Sharp. ↳ Risky. Once asked, the listener can’t unhear them, even if they don’t reply out loud. And if they do answer honestly,
We now live in a world that's overflowing with answers.
We now live in a world that's overflowing with answers. Data, dashboards, and AI that can pull together almost anything. But the real work of thinking (for leaders and their advisors) hasn’t changed. It’s still about making a judgment call when things are cloudy. That'
Ever feel hijacked by your reaction to a client event?
Ever feel hijacked by your reaction to a client event? You get asked an awkward question - answer it badly. Then you replay that in your head for hours. Punishing yourself multiple times. We spend so much time stuck in thoughts we didn’t choose. I used to think “professional” meant
Systems Analyst to Sales.
I used to be a Systems Analyst. Then I stepped into sales. Overnight, the rules changed. In systems analysis, things are structured, logical, predictable. The odd error wasn't usually catastrophic, just inconvenient. But in sales, failure isn’t an error in logic. It's missing quota and
From Trusted Advisor to Vendor.
From Trusted Advisor to Vendor ... The silent slide that's killing your firm's credibility. It doesn’t happen overnight. One day you’re leading strategic initiatives ... The next, you’re just “another supplier” on a rate card. That slide - from partner to provider - is slow, silent, and