The perspectives here are not those of a casual observer, though they are not those of a disinterested one either. They have been gathered across time zones and closed-door meetings: from building governance frameworks and risk infrastructure – the kind that sit quietly behind decisions that require a signature. From adapting operational excellence at the very organisations that invented it. From the particular vantage point of having sat next to the people who have to sign off on things, which turns out to be clarifying in ways that no amount of reading about it quite replicates. Exposure, it turns out, is an excellent teacher.
The subjects covered here are eclectic by design. Intellectual curiosity, it turns out, does not restrict itself to a single industry.
On building. The correct response to a problem is not always an email. It is a mechanism, preferably one that works. The PDCA cycle is only as useful as what you do at the Act stage. Testing theoretical mechanisms using rapid experimentation, and against real data, fixes the problem in a way that holds.
On architecting organisations. The mechanism is only the beginning. The harder problem is building the conditions under which others can build – the governance structures, the shared language, the accountability architecture that means the right decisions get made by the right people, even when no one is watching. This is less visible work than the mechanism itself, and considerably more important. A framework that requires its author to be in the room has already failed its first design requirement.
On developing others. The highest-leverage work a senior leader can do is building the people who will develop the next mechanism. Frameworks degrade. Capabilities compound. One has learned more from coaching others through a problem than from solving it oneself, and the organisation is better for it.
On improvement. The PDCA cycle (Plan, Do, Check, Act) is not just a framework. It is not merely a methodology, a deliverable, or a “key takeaway.” It is simply how rigorous thinking tends to work. The fact that it requires a diagram is a concession to the rest of us. The fact that organisations still get it wrong is a concession to human nature.
On kaizen. Small, sustained change is the most underrated force in business. Grand transformations make for better conference keynotes but fail at a rate that would embarrass a coin toss. Kaizen, by contrast, is relentlessly undramatic and, for that very reason, relentlessly effective.
On creating. Kaizen iterates. It does not originate. The blank page requires a different instinct: the willingness to commit to a structure before the evidence is complete, and to be wrong in ways that are at least instructive. Some problems have no existing framework to improve. Those are, on balance, the more interesting ones.
On seeing for yourself. Genchi genbutsu: go to the actual place, look at the actual thing. The instinct to form confident opinions from a comfortable office has not served anyone especially well, including, on occasion, oneself. Data is better than anecdote. Being there is better than data. Understanding what one is looking at when one arrives is the part that takes the longest to learn.
On Asian business culture. It is vast, varied, and not especially well served by confident conclusions formed at altitude. Having lived and worked across Asia-Pacific over many years, one develops a tolerance for ambiguity and an intolerance for sweeping generalisations, except the sweeping generalisation that sweeping generalisations are usually wrong.
On managing across countries. The single most reliable predictor of whether a cross-border engagement will succeed is whether the person leading it has ever been genuinely wrong about something in a foreign country, and noticed. Consistency of global standards and sensitivity to local realities are not opposites. Humility is the most portable business skill there is. It also fits in carry-on luggage.
On ergonomic keyboards. Every manifesto requires at least one surprising commitment. Wrist angle matters. The C-suite becomes painful with a flat keyboard.
On photography and travel. The examined life benefits from the well-observed one. A camera imposes a particular discipline: the requirement to see what is actually there, rather than what one expected to find, and the particular clarity that comes with it.
This site has been publishing since 2009, which, in internet years, makes it a venerable institution. In kaizen terms, it simply means we are still in the middle of the first cycle.
Progress has no finish line. It has only the next check.
Full speed ahead.
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