Read the Words

Digitally speaking, writing or blogging is one of the coolest and easiest ways to share thoughts and insights (often referred to as opinions) that are outside the usual. Look for fresh insights and stories each week.

Introducing the Stewardship Table

Today I’m doing something I rarely do. I’m setting aside our usual Sunday conversation to tell you about something I’ve built. For years, I’ve talked about and shared with you ideas about things done in a better way. Recently, I changed the podcast’s name from The 5Cs to The 5Cs: Business. Climate. Leadership. Done Differently....

Who Actually Gets Paid?

A gent called me a few months ago. He’d been selling online since the early eighties, one of the first people to do it, long before anyone called it internet selling. He’d since tried Amazon. Tried Facebook. Tried LinkedIn. Failed on all three. He wanted to know what he’d missed. It took me those same...

My plumber is licensed; my banking app isn’t

On September 1, the bank called to tell us $2,500 had left our account. We got the money back. It took most of the month, and more than six weeks later, I’m still cleaning up. But what has stayed with me isn’t the money. It’s who carries the cost when technology fails. Right now, that’s...

My Father Held Tight. I Let Go.

Ryan’s mom is a worrier.One day he asked her why she worried so much.“My mom was a worrier,” she said.And her mom?“Her too.”Now Ryan’s sister is a worrier. Think about that for a moment. His great-grandmother’s worry is living in his sister today. Nobody chose it. Nobody sat down and decided to pass it on....

Have Your Reading Habits Changed?

I got myself (three pairs of) new glasses last month. Somewhere in the middle of the eye test and the final fitting pick-up, I realized something else had changed along with my eyesight. I’ve become almost impossibly picky about what I’ll actually read. A few years ago, my sister-in-law gave me a stack of romance...

The AI Feature Nobody Warns You About

The one very specific feature I want to talk about today is the one that never leaves you alone. Look, I spent part of this summer with the Stoics. Marcus Aurelius mostly, some Seneca, and every version of the Odyssey plot that isn’t actually the Odyssey, because I cannot stand Ulysses, and I’m not going...

Have You Ever Heard Voices?

Some of the most capable people I know are quietly running on information that never shows up in a business case. Not intuition in the vague, decorative sense. Something closer to data they can’t fully explain and have learned not to ignore. I think dismissing that, in ourselves or in the people we work with,...

I Was Wrong

I thought climate change was overblown. Not a casual opinion. A considered one. I had spent decades inside corporate structures, watching how data gets weaponised for agendas on every side of every argument. I was skeptical of the volume. I thought the urgency was exaggerated and that business, if it got serious, could course-correct. That...

The Muscle Left the Building

It’s the last weekend in August. Which means September begins shortly. And we all know what that brings. Our energy changes, our focus gets very clear, and with four months left in the year, some of us, after taking stock of our progress this year, declare our efforts as simply not enough. Yikes! Optimism does...

The Door We Lock Ourselves

A woman told me last week that her life’s work can’t be translated into business language. Twenty years of trying, she said, and the honest answer is it simply can’t be done. I spent more time obsessing about that response than I meant to. Here’s what I eventually decided. The only way she’s ever reached...