My Writing
I’ve always been a writer.
Sometimes that writing has appeared in leadership articles, newsletters, workshop guides, and website copy. Sometimes it has shown up in notebooks, journals, and half-finished manuscripts scattered across my desktop.
These days, I’m spending more time following the stories that won’t leave me alone.
A thoughtful life begins with wondering. Everything else is a field note.
Change-the-World Type
Current Book Project
Do-Gooder
Field Notes from a Lifelong Change-the-World Type
For more than thirty years, I worked in places where people were trying to survive: prisons, homeless shelters, schools, youth services, community organisations, and leadership roles.
Along the way, I collected stories that have stayed with me for decades.
Stories of prisoners preparing for release, homeless teenagers, exhausted frontline workers, lonely widows, damaged leaders, and countless people trying to find their place in the world.
For a long time, I thought this book was about them.
It turns out it is also about the stories we tell ourselves about helping, belonging, usefulness, and worth.
Part memoir and part social observation, Do-Gooder explores a question that has followed me for most of my life:
Newsletter
Field Notes
Field Notes is my newsletter for fellow wonderers, wanderers, and meaning-makers. It is a place for observations, reflections, questions, and stories gathered from everyday life.
Some entries begin with leadership. Others begin with a walk, a conversation, a park bench, a book, a train journey, or a chance encounter.
At heart, Field Notes is about stories — the stories we inherit, the stories we tell ourselves, and the stories hiding in plain sight around us every day.
The common thread is curiosity.
Because I believe thoughtful lives are built one question at a time.
Read Field Notes on Substack →From the field
“Some entries begin with leadership. Others begin with a walk, a conversation, a park bench, or a chance encounter.”
The thread
“Stories hiding in plain sight around us every day.”
The belief
“Thoughtful lives are built one question at a time.”
Essay Series & Future Book
Unlearning Leadership
For years, I taught leadership. I designed leadership programmes. I coached leaders. I researched leadership. And somewhere along the way, I started wondering whether some of the stories we tell about leadership deserve a second look.
Unlearning Leadership began as a series of essays and reflections shared on LinkedIn. It explores the narratives, assumptions, and myths that shape how we think about leadership — and what becomes possible when we question them.
It asks questions such as:
- Where did our ideas about leadership come from?
- Which leadership stories serve us well — and which no longer do?
- What happens when we challenge the myths we’ve accepted as truth?
- How might leadership look different if we started with curiosity, compassion, and connection?
Work in progress
“What becomes possible when we question the stories we’ve accepted as truth about leadership?”
Also seeking
Agents and publishers with an appetite for books that ask hard questions about how we lead.
A Final Note
Most of my writing starts with a question. A question about leadership. A question about learning. A question about humanity. A question about why people do what they do.
I’ve spent much of my life following those questions down unexpected paths. Some have led to classrooms. Some to boardrooms. Some to research projects, community organisations, books, and conversations with remarkable people.
Many have led to detours. And almost all of them have left me with more questions than answers.
That’s exactly how I like it.
Everything else is a field note.
Walk alongside me for a little while
If that sounds like your kind of conversation, I’d love to have you along.
Field Notes is where I share stories, observations, questions, and connections gathered along the way. Sometimes about leadership. Sometimes about learning. Always about what it means to be human.
“The best stories feel less like a performance and more like a companion walking beside you, pointing at something interesting and saying: have you noticed that?”
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