Writing
Essays on education, leadership, and strategy.
Written to be argued with, not simply read: pieces drawn from the questions that recur across my advisory work.
More foundational than any of these essays, my educational philosophy sets out what I believe schools are for.
-
Reality TV taught me something about accountability
Acknowledgement and apology tell people you understand what happened. Ownership requires action; accountability means accepting the consequences. On the difference, and why organisations so often reward the performance of it over the substance.
Read → -
When heritage schools go international, style travels easily. Substance doesn't.
A name and a crest reproduce frictionlessly. What it actually feels like to be educated at a school does not. On the gap between the two, and what protects against dilution.
Read → -
What Radical Candor taught me about mutual intelligibility
Communication norms vary across cultures, teams, and individuals, but the gap between what is said and what is thought is near-universal. On using a feedback framework not as a rulebook but as a neutral language for naming how we actually talk to each other.
Read → -
A provocation is not a position
Speaking last protects independent thinking but carries its own cost. On a sharper way to put an idea into the room: not as a question or a suggestion, but as a provocation.
Read →
A series
Using AI well in professional practice
Three articles on what it actually means to use AI well in a professional context: the problem of flattened voice, the work of teaching a tool to sound like you, and the conversation that does the real thinking.
-
Part One
AI and the flattening of professional voice
What gives away an AI-generated response, and why a homogenised professional voice carries a real cost to the individuals and organisations that depend on clear thinking.
Read → -
Part Two
Know thyself: what I learned from teaching AI to sound like me
Getting AI close enough to your own style turns out to be an exercise in self-knowledge: you cannot instruct it in how you write until you understand how you write.
Read → -
Part Three
AI as a sparring partner: why the conversation matters as much as the initial prompt
The part that matters most is not the prompt but what follows it. On using AI to pressure-test thinking rather than to produce answers.
Read →
Tell me what you think
These essays are written to be argued with. I post new pieces on LinkedIn as they're written, and I genuinely want to know what you make of them: what lands, what doesn't, where you'd push back.