Let's Go

Rich Watkins June 10, 2025 I've always found general conversations about "Decision Making" a little flat and empty. And that might be because there are often a few bad assumptions baked in: There is one kind of thing called "a decision" - For me we can speak more clearly when we aren't talking about the noun but the verb - about the act of deciding. And then our focus moves from the thing called a decision (as if there is just one type) to the world we are trying to impact by

Rich Watkins June 15, 2025 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) might be the most influential philosopher of the 20th Century. His first book (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) is a logical masterpiece and his second (Philosophical Investigation) turns it's eye onto language itself - offering us a tapestry of pictures and ideas that reimagine what is happening when we speak - leaving behind the idea of "Language as a way to transfer meaning". I made a video exploring five of his pow

Rich Watkins December 4, 2025 Recently i'm talking less about "collaboration" - preferring to talk about how we can get things going. This is what i've always meant by collaboration anyway, but I am finding that the C word comes with too much baggage. It smuggles too many preconceptions of inefficient and unproductive meetings - of bloated projects - of cooks aplenty and spoiled broth. For some it seems to evoke almost a sense of despair or dread or both - as if anything "col

Rich Watkins November 13, 2024 You can’t do great work if your heart isn’t in it. Good leadership can’t be half hearted. Good organisations do not lose heart when things are tough. So why don’t we talk much about the heart? We talk about the head - we value thinking and insight. We talk about the gut - we value instinct and confidence. So let's get to the heart of the matter. The ❤️ symbol has become to be a signal of “sweetness” but the human heart is the source of passion a

Rich Watkins March 10, 2024 “Power isn’t one over the other it's to be able to stand on your own two feet” Virginia Satir What we can get done depends on how powerful we are. We know this instinctively but what does it mean? I spent the last few years with power on my mind - dissatisfied with my own ideas about power and looking for useable ways of engaging with power. Here is where i've landed for now. I started with Robert Greene's 48 Rules of Power but, for a mix of reason

Rich Watkins July 25, 2023 We've just moved to Sussex and on our local farm I saw these silos and it got me thinking. Silos are brilliant. In farms they help > Keep crops from getting eaten by rats > Stop different crops get mixed up > Allows you to store more in smaller area (for example, enabling you to wait for a better price) In organisations they help > Create order and efficiency around the work we do a lot - often as a load-bearing structure > Build a shared local lan

Rich Watkins June 3, 2024 Opportunities sometimes come our way to do something we haven't done before. I feel we can get caught in one of two strategies: Courage: you can do it! dare to believe! fake it till you make it! Caution: consider the risks! take care! be prepared! I have a near-death snowboarding accident to illustrate why Courage might not be a universally wise strategy. But my upbringing emphasised Caution in all things -and this has in many situations limited what

Rich Watkins February 29, 2024 Many meetings are suffering. We move through them but they are not time well spent. As well as knowing this from my own experience, I spent some months last year immersed in this particular form of pain with Stephanie Orme - on a project to alleviate it. We were joined by some good folk at a range of organisations including Accenture UKI and Save The Children. We had senior managers sharing their ongoing experiences and experimented our way towa

Rich Watkins July 6, 2023 Just got back from two days with Dave Snowden (of Cynefin fame) looking at how we conceive of and develop leadership in complexity. Starting with the name: Re-Wilding Leadership. I was drawn to the idea that we need to un-tame leadership - I think we all see that leadership discourse can be... how to say... banal? boring? Our narrow definitions and presuppositions can contain and constrain what is possible. And we see how this tamed leadership doesn'

Rich Watkins April 30, 2024 In the heat and pressure of interpersonal conflict, I know what it's like to transform into a scaredy-cat dashing out of a difficult situation without any poise or purpose. In other conflict situations, I have become an unnecessarily argumentative hissing mog, more interested in posturing for status or territory than finding a productive solution. Neither of these catty approaches has served me particularly well, so over the last decade (or so) I h

Rich Watkins August 12, 2024 As we move through a complex world - we take initiative to move things we care about forwards. We are almost always collaborating with other people to get things done and so taking initiative means initiating conversations. Practically that is: talking 1-1; leading or participating in group discussions (meetings, workshops); and writing (emails, messages, documents). To repeat my favourite Werner Erhard quote with no apologies: "A problem only exi

Rich Watkins June 10, 2024 One of my favourite essays is The Problem and the Paradox by David Bohm, the famous theoretical physicist whose ideas about the quantum level led him onwards to more 'mundane' questions on how we live. I think it's also an interesting essay on how we work. The opening to the essay is true as ever: there is a lot of talk about all the problems we face but solutions seem hard to find. And that's also true in organisational life - where the problems we