Advisory Notes: Why I Write

I write to notice things.

Things inside myself and in others.

I do it to slow down. To see what’s happening — internally, relationally, culturally — before it slips away.

That habit of noticing is also how I work with creative organizations and their leaders.

Most of the problems I’m asked to help with don’t begin where we think. They aren’t caused by a lack of process, clarity, or intelligence. They come from what we don’t talk about.

• unacknowledged fear
• unexamined loyalty
• unresolved conflict
• quiet resentment
• the gradual erosion of trust

By the time those things surface –– missed deadlines, disengagement, turnover –– they’ve usually been present right along.

Creative groups are really vulnerable to this.

Creative work requires emotional risk. People bring more of themselves to the work, and the work reaches deeper inside them. That makes creative organizations unusually productive… and unusually fragile. When the emotional glue that holds people together weakens, things can unravel quickly, often without a clear, visible cause.

Writing helps me to pay attention to those subtle dynamics. It forces me to stay with the uncertainty, not run from it. It keeps me from jumping to conclusions, and to listen for what’s not being said.

In that sense, my writing is not separate from my advisory work; it’s the discipline that makes my work possible.

When I’m advising, I don’t arrive with frameworks, decks, or diagnostic tools. I work through one-on-one conversations — careful, private, human conversations — where leaders and staff think out loud without the usual constraints. Together, we notice patterns: how people react under pressure, how conflict is avoided or mismanaged, how success and failure are defined. And, how authority is exercised or withheld.

Because I’m a creative, I’ve lived the internal terrain: the oscillation between confidence and self-doubt, the hunger for meaningful critique, the need to be seen without being exposed. I don’t approach creative people as problems to be managed, but as individuals whose nervous systems are already working hard to produce something that doesn’t yet exist.

The writing people encounter — on my blog, in my mailing list community, on Substack, on Medium — comes from the same place. It’s not case studies or how-to advice. It’s my attempt to describe lived experience accurately enough that something loosens. Often, clients tell me they felt recognized in a piece before they ever reached out. That recognition is usually the beginning of useful work.

I don’t believe great creative cultures are built from solutions designed for corporate environments. They grow from understanding how meaning, identity, and belonging operate… and from handling those dynamics with care.

Writing is how I refine my understanding. Advising is where it gets tested, quietly, in real lives and real companies.

If my writing resonates with you, it may be because you’re already sensing that the work beneath the work matters. That’s where I spend my time.