About two and a half years ago, I finally completed CTI’s coach training courses – about 18 months after I started them, and much longer thinking “I think this would be useful and one day I will take it”. I find some people conceive of coaching as being a professional advice giver, or asking questions ..read more

I have had a beautiful summer. Bookended by two epic trips either side, Hong Kong -> Sydney -> Bali before, and India (Dehradun, Chandigarh, Delhi) after, the summer was peaceful. I prioritized neglected parts of my life. My spine – finally went to the chiropractor, got into yoga, finally learned how to enjoy it. My ..read more

I had a great conversation with Oleks about my book, about DRI-ing your career and why leadership starts with self management ..read more

Returned to the It Shipped That Way podcast to talk about my book ..read more

I have been quiet on here lately because I’ve been focused on writing a book. The book proper will come out in early 2024, but section 1 – what it means to be the DRI (Directly Responsible Individual) of your career – is now available for early release. You can see it on the O’Reilly website [subscribers only]. As part of this section, I want to include other perspectives, so if you have a story about a time you learned to DRI your career, please submit it via this form, and it will be reviewed and considered for inclusion. There’s a full list in the form about the types of stories I’m lookin ..read more

We talked about hiring directors, the fallacy of “servant leadership”, and what makes teams great [listen ..read more

I recorded an episode of the DOU podcast with Oleks. It was an interesting and fun conversation ..read more

CC BY 2.0 aeroix When I talk about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), I’m typically coming at it from an angle of systematic change. The purpose of DEI, as I see it, is to dismantle a rigged system and move to something more equitable. This is why the concept of “no politics at work” is seen as antithetical to effective DEI, because what does a person do when their entire existence has been politicised? The frustrating thing about DEI, is that often when organisations talk about DEI what they mean is the performative type of DEI. The appearance of progress, without the challenge of systema ..read more

I bought Thinking in Bets (Amazon) a while ago, April 2020 to be precise. It finally made it’s way out of my endless “to read” pile because I was having something of a crisis of confidence about my own decision making. Some key thing that stood out. Separating analysis of the result from the decision itself. The analogy throughout the book is poker, which is a combination of skill and luck. It’s an example of the key bias humans have – to associate winning with good skill, and losses to bad luck. Learning from decisions means separating out the luck and the skill, and focusing on improving sk ..read more

I recorded an episode of Console‘s DevTools podcast, talking about privacy engineering. You can listen to it here ..read more