The Scribbler: Epochs Within Epochs
Good morning, and welcome to this edition of The Scribbler. Given it is Easter, I thought I would take a moment to revisit my first intellectual love, history, and examine
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Essays
Everything published, most recent first. Two a week: a standalone piece, and a reflection on that week's conversation.
337 essays
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LeadershipGovernanceManagementOrganisationsStrategyEthicsPhilosophyHistoryPoliticsPsychologyTechnologyArtificial Intelligence
Why Positioning Eats Predicting For Breakfast
Although we cannot know what tomorrow brings, we can use a pattern recognition approach to lower risk and devise stronger strategies. This is because while it is nearly impossible for us to predict one specific future, we can confidently position for multiple probable futures.
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Observe, Orientate, Decide and Act
John Boyd’s OODA Loop—observe, orient, decide, act—highlights agility, context, and speed in decision-making. Challenging linear models, it shows why adaptive thinking is critical to leadership and organisational success.
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Governance: Managing Risk and Creating Legitimacy
Effective governance depends on capabilities shared by managers and informal leaders, recognising that risk, strategy, and culture are inseparable. This calls for rethinking traditional governance models—and the rise of the governor-manager.
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Governance: Achieving a Healthy Organisational Culture
Seeing organisations as complex social systems highlights governance as a cultural force. Responsibility extends beyond senior leaders to all managers, shaping behaviour through clear standards, accountability, and consistent leadership practice.
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The Scribbler: The AI Risk to Proxies
Good evening, and welcome to the second edition of The Scribbler. A newsletter featuring an expanded set of articles addressing a key challenge facing organisations. This month I am taking
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Governance: The Foundation for Strategy and Planning
Governance allocates authority, responsibility, and decision rights. When it is remote or sealed off from scrutiny, power goes unchecked, accountability erodes, and resource decisions become arbitrary and subjective.
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Calling Time on Sunk Costs
Reframing so-called “negative” people as pragmatists exposes unchecked optimism as a driver of the sunk cost fallacy—loss aversion, ego, and false hope. Drop the Kool-Aid, face reality, and better decisions come into view.
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A Fallacy of Resourcing
When managers fall into the sunk cost fallacy, more data rarely helps because the problem is emotional, not rational. Biases like ego, loss aversion, and optimism drive persistence. Awareness, governance, and decisive leadership matter more than analysis alone.
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How to Sabotage a Meeting
Ever get the sense that the meeting you are in is more about appearances than actions? Find that people keep on raising decision items that were already settled? Notice irrelevant issues dominate the agenda? Quite possibly an aspiring CIA operative is sabotaging your meeting.
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The Scribbler: Privacy Matters
Instead of a new column, this week I am surfacing something from the archives—a selection of articles about privacy.
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A Crisp Document and Messy Meeting
A crisp document should be narrative and substantial, not slides. As Bezos argues, six-page memos beat PowerPoint, which sells rather than thinks. When meetings reward persuasion over reasoning, organisations get polished form but weak substance.
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Fostering Leader-Managers
Organisations that are above average in their track record of developing leader-managers put an emphasis on creating challenging opportunities, not just for aspiring talent but for incumbent Line Managers who can too easily become stale.
The Commons
Managing Control and Leading Motivation
By leveraging the management tool of control to harness the energy released by the leadership tool of motivation, the informal leadership networks that arise can handle the greater demands that result from the organisational change process.
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Aligning And Organising, It's All About People
When alignment and planning are conjoined, the process releases untapped potential. This is because a leader-manager is energising people by unlocking feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. An approach that ultimately leads to greater wellness.
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