A little bit more…

Can we play a little game? It's called, "What is the purpose of this website?"

I kind of want you to get a sense of me. To like me. To want to work with me. But also don't want to do this in the way that everyone else does. Which, ironically, is what everyone else wants to do as well.

I do want to give you as accurate an impression as I can about what it is like to work with me so that you don't waste your time being tricked into contacting me when I might just not be your thing.

So I could go down the route of sincere irony. I could make this site look like all the other indie consultant's website, with a knowing wink. Big photo (seem to have nailed that one). List of services. Glossy and polished. You know the type (without me linking to one).

Or I could be intentionally understated. Minimalist. Not much but text. A bit like Venkatesh Rao.

Or I could bill myself as a mythic version of my persona. The monk. The gardener. The poet. The hunter. The mercenary. Somebody who likes to take in all the information available in a given context before moving in to make a change. Who enables the mercurial. Who prepares like a martial artist. A little like my good friend and Wizard Dr Jason Fox.

I kind of want a bit of all of these, and I think that is part of what you get with me. A little bit of everything.

So, if you want to (literally) hear a bit about my way of going about things, you can listen to some of my podcast episodes (you might like Candice Smith, or Athalia Zwartz, or Eddie Harran, or John Chambers).

Or you can jump into a bit of my writing.

Or you might like to read about a few of the things I have done. I've done some kind of divergent things, which may or may not make me well suited for you. I’ve consulted with large corporates on everything ranging from product delivery to product strategy. I've started a podcast. Two actually. I 'failed' at getting a new breath mint launch (well, we did sell 30,000 units). I've run a tech start-up. And a co-working space. Started a bicycle store. Imported scooter helmets. Coach a football and cricket team. I am part of a digital community called the Coterie. I have been part of personal growth circles and done my fair share of workshops and silent meditation retreats.

As my friend Tim K might say, I think that this divergence of experience may help as I work with others on observing the emergent within their context, before getting to the convergent most relevant for them.

Some words that I like right now are solar punk, complexity, dancing, game-b, emergence, synthesis.

So I hope that gives you the gist of things. I do the usual independent consultant stuff. Facilitating, strategy, coaching, speaking.

And my sweet spot is working within organisations that have been around for a little while, are small to medium-sized (20-100 people), and have come to some kind of moment where something needs to change to enable them to continue playing the infinite game. I'm a good partner to have in that kind of exploration; whether it be some kind of change to the way the organisation is organised (like rituals, structures, teams and processes), to how it understands itself (like evolving of values, improving feedback, or organisational strategy), or to some kind of outward looking quest (like discovering the viability of a new product idea).

Some words about this that might be a bit more familiar include organisational design, organisational development, leadership development, product management, workshop facilitation, product development processes, market research, product conceptualisation, innovation, mindfulness, listening, coaching, mentoring, feedback loops, agile, lean, thinking environments.