Month: April 2026

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A Step Into The Past

I’ve just come off an hour-long call with some academics where we dicussed a paper they’d written that will now go forward to an online ‘Journal Club’ where people who are not academics, but have studied the subject, get together to critically discuss this paper.

What’s refreshing is that these academics (all women, I should say, which may or may not play a part in their response) are open to learning through reflection. In my career (lol) world the idea of reflecting and being reflexive is almost frowned upon. You’re just on to the next thing.

When I started blogging back in the early 2000s, I used it as a way to get feedback. Later, perhaps between 2009 and 2016, I used it as a way to think out loud. Even later, I used it as a way to reflect, although that was mostly in the early 2020s. Finally, as I learned more about myself and my way of working I used it to do all three, sometimes in the same blog post.

Now, I’m starting to do that again after a fair while of simply thinking out loud, or just shouting for no reason.

Looking back over the two decades or more of blog posts (they’re all available online) I see that the frequency of reflexive and reflecting posts increases around the same time, which is when I started to work for myself and beginning to try and understand what it was that was doing, or attempting to do. Some of those posts are still valid and useful – in some ways more so.

For being seen as a fleeting medaia, the internet offers a quite solid medium in which to express ourselves. And perhaps we should spend time looking back and instead of using older ideas as a method of cancelling, we use it as a way to consider the journey we’ve been on. (I’m not including the obvious racist, misogynistic or outright vile things people say and have said, but just your everyday observations based on what you knew at the time).

I wonder if we don’t throw out questions now which we can only answer later because we’re scared of it coming back to haunt us. That golden age of blogging where people knew they didn’t know but wrote things anyway in order to get more perspectives.

So, yeah. I have been talking about Systems literacy and it’s made me really think about not only what I’m doing when I write into this text field and click ‘publish’ but also what I could be doing with the output. The thing I wanted to do, yet have not quite done: to reflect.

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A Difference Of Opinion

A project I’m working on involves engaging with a lot of internal stakeholders at an agency. I’ve worked with some of these people before, but not to their process. Which, obviously, differs from mine.

Yesterday, we came across a challenge of how to negotiate a part of that process that means different things to us both. I’m happy to capitualte here, but not without putting forth my own reasoning. After all, while I’m good to accept the process they use and adhere to it as much as possible, I’m also being asked to bring my own thinking and process to the table. And so I do.

One thing has changed in my favour, the other hasn’t. I think we’re showing our hand too early on this second point, but I cannot change it. I’ve argued my case, which has to an extent been accepted. However, in terms of moving forward I’ve stopped pushing my process and stepping into line with theirs. It remains to be seen what happens, but after 9 weeks of waiting we finally got a date from their client for the next state to progress.

So, there we are. I think this shows that it’s good to have an open discussion where there are differences. Equally, there comes a time when being right isn’t, well, right. It’s about what moves things forward, something I’ve learned many times in my career and which, when the time is right, I shift back to.

I’d rather have momentum than I would win a battle that causes friction.

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Start again

This month has been terrible. Let’s hope May is better.
Anyway, I wrote a post on Unspun Heroes which I think probably sums up how things have been. On the more positive side, I did some strategic work for a client and they loved it. I’m also working on some brand strategy stuff that is being dragged out by the client that I have no idea if it’ll ever get finished. Which is a shame as I’d really like to get paid.

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Carry On Regardless

Not a comedy film from the post-war British film franchise, but some thoughts about projects and when it might be time to call a day. This applies as much to my own personal projects as it does freelance/contracting stints.

I’m currently waiting for a project to get going having stalled somewhat due to what I would term ‘client reticence’. My feeling is the client knows what they’re offering and therefore they don’t need to go through the preliminary strategic work to determine how they take it to market. I could be wrong, but that’s my takeaway from the email conversations I get to see.

It’s a tiny bit off for them to make such an assumption – both for me and also for their current and prospective customers. It’s also telling that the thing they’re wanting to bring to market does not yet exist, and nor do they have customers queuing up to buy this service. That’s not to say it isn’t amazing or perfect for the market, etc. It’s the state of play.

When do you walk away, having already invested a great deal of time and effort?

The second project is my own. Unspun Heroes.

It’s faltering a little. It’s incredibly time consuming and it takes a long time for the financial side of things to stack up. So, when the next release has clauses from the rights owner that shortens the time available to sell a given number of records, adds in costs that could be handled differently – all while you’re still selling the last of the stock from the previous releases… well, there are times when the easy decision is to throw in the towel and move on.

However, as money is not the motivator, it’s hard to make that decision to stop. It doesn’t feel right. There’s definitely something there, with willing customers and a lot of love, but the risk/reward has shifted more towards the risk and farther away from the reward (beyond the joy of playing the record once it’s pressed).

As with all these things, there is often a way through. The easy option is not always the right one. In the first instance above, someone else will likely make a decision that I’ll adhere to; in the second instance, some creative thinking is needed and some test-and-learn principles applied. If, after that, it doesn’t stack up, then it will be mothballed as a physical product project and shift into a simple blog/newsletter project. I’m still convinced that at some point I’ll be able to resurrect the physical product side of things, even if it means saving some money to do it.

What both of these situations have shown me is that failure is what happens in other people’s eyes. I know I’ve done some amazing work on both, and had a lot of successes (small ones, but successes all the same). There is a chance to renergise, to recoup some losses by shifting how I make the gains. That could be creating momentum with the client on what their vision is and then looping back to start some of the strategy process afterwards once they see why it’s needed. That could be pulling together enough people to put up some funds to make the pressing happen and using that to offset the risk – and finding a way to do it without anyone losing money, or at least the fear of it.

Ultimately, I think acting creatively and thinking creatively will win out. Even if the final verdict is to stop and walk away. It’s just that doing that without some form of exploration is as much a failure as continuing when it’s clearly not working out as intended.

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Is there an assumption?

Do people immediately assume that ai is being used to create something, now that it is so unibquitous (allegedly)?

I personally don’t use ai to create. I use it to capture and transcribe, because it saves time. This is one instance of my usage. In fact, I would probably never use ai to create, but I would use it to do administrative tasks that take time to do and are best suited to being done (mediocre as the output is) by machine.

And yet, I see people jump to the conclusion that ai has been used in creation. I wonder if they are right with that assumption, and I’m also interested in why that’s their first thought when they see something creative.

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What do you mean, professional?

Some words bring out hives in me. Not literal, that I know of, but they sure make my skin itch. Professional is one such word.

In many cases it’s about how someone looks. On The Apprentice they have to wear a suit because that’s ‘professional’ and yet the actions of many wearing ‘smart’ clothes lack any level of professionalism. Their behaviour shows them to be amateur at best and snake oil salespeople at worst.

Why do we conflate ‘business wear’ with professional and not actions that lead to positive outcomes?

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7 hours

Drove today. Well, sat in traffic for most of the time I was in the car. What should have been a 4-hour round trip took almost double that.
Partly this was the expectation that everyone uses a satnav, so when they closed a junction I didn’t know until I got there and was diverted 25 miles in the opposite direction and had to spend almost 45 minutes retracing my steps, plus the 45 minutes say in traffic.
Of course, the traffic on the A-road I was on had gotten more congested – partly due to the closure but mostly because people drove using their car’s sensors not their eyes and brain.
And then we got a slow puncture. Cue trying to find a tyre place at short notice. They then discovered a second tyre was starting to bald so had to change that too. Still, in a way it was useful to get two almost illegal tyres sorted.

Anyway, I spent an hour in the place I wanted to spend the day and a lot of time in a car seat barely moving.
I did see diesel costing over £2 per litre several times. The most expensive petrol was almost £1.70 per litre.

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I’m Back

Well, that’s been quite the week or so.

I wasn’t feeling great nearing the end of March and picked up some sort of bug, which as someone who is immunocompromised means feeling a lot worse than your average person. I did the usual Covid tests and guzzled down Lemsip, but I juust felt worse every day.

Finally, on 30 March my wife phoned 111 and they sent out an ambulance. They couldn’t find anything wrong with my SATS and left, suggesting that I get a GP appointment as soon as possible. I think that was their idea of a joke because who can get an appointment within a week? The next morning another ambulance crew were sent out by the 111 service and this time they were sufficiently worried to get me into hospital. And there I stayed for a week.

I haven’t felt this sick for almost a decade, and back then I had a tumour growing in the lower bronchial tube of my right lung. This time I had neck and head aches, an aversion to light and the inability to move. Later I was struggling with fine motor skills. The A&E doctor was trying to send me home but a higher-up doctor decided to admit me.

36 hours on a trolley in a corridor and then a further 24 in an A&E bed before being moved to a ward. No offer of food or drink made available. I finally got some fluids in me (3 litres) after three days or so and I began to be able to sit up.

I’m still not feeling great over ten days on, although being home is preferable to being in hospital. It’s clear that the service is struggling, but the care I did receive from the nurses was excellent. The doctors couldn’t really have cared less as to them I just had a virus of some sort and was therefore taking up a bed space unnecessarily. I get it, but just because I didn’t have an infection or obvious trauma it didn’t mean I wasn’t really quite sick and in need of their assistance.

Anyway, today I have to be back at work for a call and online workshop. I’ve had to build it out in Miro in a morning and prepare to talk for 90 minutes or so and try not to cough. It’s done and I’m as ready as I can be. I’m just glad that the project is moving forward again after stalling for quite some time on the client side of things.

I’ll try to pick things up on the blog as the week progresses and, hopefully, no enforced breaks from illness will happen for the rest of this year.