Stories that shape our futures
A different quality of conversation.
More than twenty-five years of consulting, scholarship, and culture work. Regular field notes on Substack; long-form Fresh Takes thought papers; journal articles and published writing; book-length thinking in the KOAN method and beyond.
About
Twenty-five years of leading transformation.
My years of consulting, scholarship, and creative work have taught me one thing again and again: culture is something we shape day-to-day. It is not a noun you install, measure, or roll out.
Culture is a function of the stories we tell and re-tell — which is why how we engage with difference matters so much.
Anything genuinely new arises only from encountering the unfamiliar. That’s where magic happens.
My “fresh takes” are exercises in re-membering what we’ve always known through the lenses of this moment. I reflect on ideas that are evolving in real time all around us, trace their lineage in my own work and others’, and invite us all into an exercise in delight and discovery.
Fresh Takes
Re-made to meet this moment.
Fresh Takes are short, surprising thought papers that move a familiar idea from certainty to curiosity. When we run into something we thought we knew or understood from a fresh perspective, it invites us to loosen our grip on certainty, lean into inquiry, and opens the doorway to innovation. A growing body of work: collections drawn from decades of scholarship, made to meet this moment.
The First Take
Amplify Your Impact: Making the Most of Mission-Driven Leadership
First released as a book chapter in 2021, 20 years after my dissertation was finished and two years before the book was published, this piece anchors the evolution of the lifetime of thinking and experience that has become the KOAN method.
Subscribe on Substack More takes as they land — collected sets & companion packs to follow
The Book
the KOAN method
Kind, Open, Adaptive, Networks — the practiced, embodied art of leading from not-knowing. Breakthrough as a devotion to cultivate, not a target to hit. A method that meets the moment.
Writing
Words of wisdom
Fresh Takes on familiar ideas, often first published in snippets as Short Takes on Substack.
Short Takes on Timely Topics — Substack →
Sister essays that put these principles into practice appear @aboldervision on Medium.
Speaking
Talks with a twist.
Keynotes and workshops on culture, leadership, and the work of becoming — each one a compelling hook with a Fresh Take’s surprise underneath. Designed to have you run into a familiar idea from a new angle. Book the KOAN method: A Leadership Artform as keynote or workshop, or find a full topic suite on the speaker sheet. Tailored topics available for your audience.
