Some organisations do not merely fail to develop judgement in the people they appoint. They select against it—and in a culture where everyone first-names the chief executive, the selection is almost invisible.
My guest this week is Tim Newbold, founder of OKR Quickstart, who has spent a decade watching goal-setting frameworks meet real organisations, and who argues that when they fail, the fault is almost never in the framework.
On the Subject of LeadershipOrganisations substitute legible proxies for the harder work of judgement. Eight arguments follow from that, and every essay advances one.
No slogans. Research-led conversations on authority, judgement, coordination, and accountability under real constraints.
My guest this week is Tim Newbold, founder of OKR Quickstart, who has spent a decade watching goal-setting frameworks meet real organisations, and who argues that when they fail, the fault is almost never in the framework.
7 October 2026My guest this week is Pamela Wyatt, Head of Business Transformation for Asia-Pacific at DT Global, who spent nearly a decade at the Asian Development Bank negotiating governance reform with Pacific governments.
9 September 2026My 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 2026Some organisations do not merely fail to develop judgement in the people they appoint. They select against it—and in a culture where everyone first-names the chief executive, the selection is almost invisible.
An agent, in law and in the older political vocabulary, is someone who exercises judgement on another's behalf and answers for having exercised it. The systems we have agreed to call agents can do the first and not the second, and the evidence on what that costs has started to arrive.
Someone is promoted, moved sideways in a restructure, or hired in on the strength of a document. Within a quarter the gap is obvious and a fortnight's certification is bought to close it. The evidence says the first move was made on the wrong signal and the second is the weakest remedy available.
A certificate records that a person completed a defined process on a defined day. It does not record whether judgement was formed — and in most organisations, nobody is asking the second question, because the first one has tidied the file.
Pamela Wyatt says the outsider's job is to adapt, not impose. Then she describes overruling a seating convention, redesigning a room over its users' objections, and building a board pipeline where none existed. The exception is the argument.
The person who takes on eight things and ruins all eight is following a specification, not indulging a personality. Organisations grow the arms themselves, because busyness is legible and judgement is not.
Everything here is written by one person, referenced properly, and answerable to the reader rather than to an advertiser. The tiers reflect how much of the working you want to see.
Open to anyone who arrives.
Free, by email. The greater part of the writing.
For readers who'd rather sustain the work than merely follow it.
