Notes on the Ascent
Observations on education, psychology, and the art of human leadership.
The Weight of Institutional Memory
Every organisation carries a history it didn't choose. The work of leadership is to understand that history, honour what is worth honouring, and change what must be changed.
Growing Leaders Who Don't Need You
The truest measure of a leader's success is not the decisions they make, but the decisions their people make well without them.
Silence as Leadership Currency
In most organisations, talking is how leaders demonstrate value. The leader who talks less and listens more is often the one whose words, when spoken, carry the most weight.
The Examined Leader
Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. The unexamined leader, I'd add, is not safe to follow.
Building a School That Is Not Afraid of Children
Most schools are built on a quiet, unspoken anxiety about what children might do if given too much freedom. The schools that actually work are built on a different premise: trust.
What Schools Taught Me About Corporations
The deepest lessons about organisational life didn't come from a business school. They came from watching how children learn, and what they need to thrive.
The Grammar of Belonging
People don't leave organisations because the strategy is wrong. They leave because they stopped feeling like they belonged to something that cared about them.
The Teacher Is the Curriculum
We spend enormous energy designing syllabi, purchasing technology, and building campuses. The single most important variable in a child's education remains the human being standing at the front of the room.
Why Music Is Not an Extracurricular
Every time a school cuts music to make room for test preparation, it loses something more than an activity. It loses a way of knowing.
What a Teacher's Silence Teaches
The most powerful tool in a teacher's hands isn't a lesson plan. It's the willingness to stop talking.
The Architecture of a School's Soul
Before you lay a single brick, you must answer the deepest question: What kind of human being do you wish to send into the world?
The Physics of Presence
Why the most effective leadership intervention isn't a framework, but a state of being.
Humanizing the Workplace
How restorative practices and psychological safety can transform a toxic corporate environment.
Preserving Curiosity in Early Education
The rush to prepare students for jobs that don't exist yet often destroys the one skill they actually need, curiosity.