Category: Notes

A place to post notes that may be seed for a future post.

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Captain it’s imperative you listen

The captain (boss) gets the final say. It’s important there is clarity about who is in charge. However being the boss doesn’t mean every decision is the right one. You (first officer) need a way you can convey your point of view if the decision(s) being made could have a very bad outcome. At work we follow the sociocracy workflow that has a principle of raising “critical concerns”. In aviation they say “captain, it’s imperative you listen” which is their code trigger to ensure the captain pays specific attention. Everyone needs ways to raise important questions. The boss may still choose an alternative course of action but at least both parties know how to raise their concerns.

Having a clear procedure for this type of communication may save time/money/ avoid a significant risk to you or others.

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Snakes and ladders

Every interaction is like a roll of the dice. You aim to move forward. Yet in the game Snakes and ladders a roll of the dice can move you forward but then suddenly back down the rung of a ladder. A little way down or nearly back to square one. Every time your boss changes, your contact leaves at the place you had influence or the world around you changes it can feel like your tumbling back to the beginning. Better to know that and know the conditions of the rules than to keep focusing on changing the game just because you don’t want to play. Expect to tumble and go again and again.

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Walk and talk 2025

This week I attended a walk and talk facilitated group in the Yorkshire Dales. Time to unpick challenges and work through the next 12 months.

My word of the trip in relation to work was “frustrated”. Time to take action.

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Dreaming of a single customer view

We want to be successful. One of the aims to achieve success is to know our individual fans/users/customers better. Knowing their needs allows us to design and run better services. A good service is an effective service.  From the many anonymous interactions we have every day, we want to shine light on those touchpoints to know as many of them as we can. 

Instead of just using generic terms like “total visitors to site (online and in-person), website visits per quarter, google review score, Spend per head etc there is an opportunity to be better informed. With better insights we can make data-informed decisions that don’t treat everyone identically the same. Kevin Kelly wrote about the benefits of having 1000 true fans which in summary says within any large group of people are die hard fans who give you momentum (MVP adjacent). 

Find them by building services that allow you to identify who they are across your services (opt-in of course). Use their data test assumptions about how our worldviews collide. Spot something that doesn’t work and fix it. Fix it for the fans and you’ll probably be fixing it for everyone.

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Reading list 2025

I like reading. Every year I keep a list of “books” I read or listen to. Check out my previous years too.

  • Culture is not an industry by Justin O’Connor ISBN 9781526171269 finished 01 January 2025
  • Democracy and Reform 1815-1885 by D.G.Wright paperback ISBN 0582314003 finished 11 January 2025
  • [Re-read] Universal Principles of Design by Lidwell, Holden and Butler. Paperback ISBN 9781592535873 finished 12th January 2025 – first read at University in like 2003!
  • Leaning into Value – Becoming a user-focused Museum by John H. Falk finished 16th January 2025. Ebook.
  • That’ll never work: The birth of Netflix by Marc Randolph. Finished 30th January 2025 kindle eISBN 9781913068110
  • Orbital by Samantha Harvey finished 4th February 2025. Paperback ISBN: 9781529922936
  • Quiet by Susan Cain finished 13th May 2025. Audio book
  • Platformland: An Anatomy of Next-Generation Public Services by Richard Pope. Finished 16th May 2025. Paperback ISBN: 978
  • Anything You Want by Derek Sivers. Re-read finished 18 June 2025. Hardback 9781991152381
  • Chaos by James Gleick finished 20th July paperback ISBN 97807493860
  • All that Glitters – a story of friendship, fraud and fine art by Orlando Whifield finished 1st August 2025. Hardback ISBN 9781788169950
  • Notes to myself by Seth Godin & Claude finished 20 August 2025. Paperback

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Stay curious

I get asked a lot how I got to become Co-CEO. On the things I can control, I say it’s because I stay curious.

At 16 during my first job at Burger King I wanted to find out how a BK makes money and the manager showed me. Years later that understanding is something I often replay.

I am curious about other people’s life’s, jobs and interests. Often to discover I am not personally interested about what their interested in and vice versa. Being curious doesn’t mean you have to love the topic. Learn just enough to file it away for a future moment.

Most recently I was curious about how train tracks work, remembering how fibre optics work, key moments in art history, Nick from British museum Wikipedia entry and child poverty.

Wikipedia is a great place to start. Followed by YouTube, podcasts, interviews, books and good old fashioned getting in touch.

im curious about what I’ll be curious about next.

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I don’t have an opinion today on that

I was thinking today, what do I think about X? I turned thinking into overthinking and concluded that sometimes I’m not ready to give my opinion. I haven’t thought enough about it, I don’t have expertise in said area or just don’t even care enough to dig deeper.

I’m going to try and simply say to my inner self “I don’t have an opinion”.

ah much better.

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Don’t worry I’ll do it myself

When something needs doing it is easy to insist it is done the way you know. Which spins into saying to a teammate “don’t worry I’ll do it myself”. They lose agency and you end up doing something they could have done by them and you did that other important thing.

Next time you hear yourself saying “I’ll do it myself” try to catch yourself and see what happen.

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The trust battery for a CEO

In my career to date I have always had a slight (common?) distrust of those higher up in the organisation. Trust on a personal level is gained through interactions, Rarely do most people in a workforce get to know the boss. I have heard all sorts of rumours of things that I am alleged to have said that I didn’t. Or someone will have second-guessed something I did and assumed a different thing. Our worldviews may be different and the sum of “assuming or guessing” can make gaining high levels of trust a problem.

Knowing this has made me really think how I can reduce this problem. When I started 16 months ago I regularly shared a slide which showed a graphic of a battery that was half charged with 2 of 4 bars. Enter the Trust battery. Tobi Lütke who is Shopify CEO has talked about the concept that when you start a new role people probably trust you about 50%. With each interaction you either charge or discharge the trust battery.

So over a year into my role I recently had a moment where someone really took a leap to trust me. Yah. But that being said mostly people I feel are at 50%. One of my objectives this year is to see if I can get more people in the higher side of the battery than the lower side.

How?

By doing what I say i’ll do and showing through actions and transparency. Doing but then not sharing is def one piece of the puzzle as unless folk see/hear actions they can be left unsure and that battery fails just a drop more.