A University Is For Saving the World
My guest this week is Professor Alistair Noble, President of Nan Tien Institute, a small independent higher education provider near Wollongong grounded in Buddhist values.
26 August 2026
This week’s essay
31 August 2026
Raising the Sea Level
The remedy has no dashboard, vests over years, and mostly benefits your successor—which is precisely why it is avoided. The final essay in the Prior Obligations series sets out what raising the general level of competence actually requires, and why no tool can be bought in its place.
This week’s conversation
26 August 2026
A University Is For Saving the World
My guest this week is Professor Alistair Noble, President of Nan Tien Institute, a small independent higher education provider near Wollongong grounded in Buddhist values.
On the Subject of LeadershipListen
The index
Read by argument
Filed by argument, not only by topic
Organisations substitute legible proxies for the harder work of judgement. Eight arguments follow from that, and every essay advances one.
On the Subject of Leadership
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Conversations with people who carry responsibility
No slogans. Research-led conversations on authority, judgement, coordination, and accountability under real constraints.
David Harvie: The Falcon's Club
My guest this week is David Harvie, Director of Wholesale Distribution at AUSIEX, a wholesale broker serving financial advisers and institutions, and the founder of DADBODZ, a health venture for time-poor fathers.
19 August 2026
Jay Fontanini — You Cannot Skip the Stages
Most conversations about artificial intelligence and the executive begin with a number that refuses to move. For the better part of a decade the
12 August 2026Recent essays
The full archive →
Raising the Sea Level
The remedy has no dashboard, vests over years, and mostly benefits your successor—which is precisely why it is avoided. The final essay in the Prior Obligations series sets out what raising the general level of competence actually requires, and why no tool can be bought in its place.
Inner Circle
Authorship, Not Access
I went into this conversation expecting to press a guest on whether universities are becoming trade schools. He declined the question and gave me a better one — about trust, regulation, and the difference between being consulted and having authorship.
Free to read
One Rule for the Deck, Another for the Bridge
The mandate travels downward and the exemption stays where it was written. The fourth essay in the Prior Obligations series examines organisations that require AI of the crew while the bridge quietly abstains, the consumption quota that enforces it, and the questions a director might ask.
The Commons
Judgement, Not Discipline
Asked to choose between discipline and judgement, David Harvie had just spent an hour describing his disciplines. He chose judgement anyway. On a system that worked exactly as designed, what it cost the people it promoted, and why he has rebuilt a gentler version of it.
The Commons
The Verification Asymmetry
I can audit a model's output on leadership and must take its tax advice on faith. That asymmetry is the whole problem, and it is not psychological. The third essay in the Prior Obligations series argues that AI does not deskill the competent—it unmasks the fake.
The Commons
The Score
A score creates an owner, a dashboard, a target, and a budget—everything except an improvement in the condition it measures. The second essay in the Prior Obligations series examines what happens when 'psychological debt' becomes a number, and which way its arrows actually run.
The Commons
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