Category: Blog (the archive of everything)Page 2 of 10

The signal and the coincidence

Yesterday at a workshop I am attending (more on this soon), I was given a slip of paper with a question to reflect on. It said: How do…

The wrong (moment to put on your waterproof) trousers

This is a post for the cycling decision-makers among you. It may resonate even if you don’t cycle. Variations on the question of whether, if it starts raining…

Five books for getting into regenerative thinking

This week we updated the Regenerative Design Lab reading list and included five books that we think are a good way into regenerative thinking for engineers (and other…

You only learn when you do difficult things

This is my catchphrase for the start of workshops: ‘You only learn when you do difficult things.’ It is a reminder to expect things to be difficult when…

The past, present and future at the same time

In conversations about regenerative design I draw heavily on Bill Sharpe’s Three-Horizons Model because it allows us to make sense of a complex situation. For in any group…

On the Ultraviolet Catastrophe and teaching design

In the first year of my undergraduate chemistry course, we learnt about a concept called the Ultraviolet Catastrophe. This term refers to a phenomenon predicted by classical physics…

Design versus Shopping

If the client knows exactly what they want at the start of a design process, then it isn’t design – it’s shopping. Shopping for the answer that you’ve…

Some things you might not know about the Regenerative Design Lab

In the coming weeks I’m going to be talking quite a lot about the Regenerative Design Lab because we have a new cohort starting next week. Some of…

The Schedule

I am sharing today a schedule I use in my work every time the noise from distractions gets too much and/or I don’t actually think I am making…

Start with your scales

I was taught to start my music practice by playing my scales. Starting with your scales: Starting with your scales doesn’t just apply to instruments. It applies to any…

Field notes from chaos

The wind was getting up. The waves were starting to blow in from different directions. The sea scape seemed to be changing at random. The day before, the…

Harnessing waves in our work

Today’s post picks up on yesterday’s theme of riding the waves of human energy in our work. The idea is to create a cycle of working that tunes…

Riding the wave

I spent most of yesterday afternoon up to my middle in waves learning to surf. (I’ve got a long way to go). So it is no coincidence that…

The Great Flattening

Jim Crace’s book Harvest provides fascinating portrait of rural life in England just before the start of the Industrial Revolution. What is so striking is the way the…

Smoothing things out

One of earliest childhood memories of travel is riding in the back of the car driving along a motorway in mountains in the north of Italy. To traverse…

Go (notes on complexity)

My favourite board game is Go. A 19 by 19 board. White stones versus black. You win by surrounding your opponent’s stones before they surround yours. The game…

Machine work

Inputs Outputs KPIs Tools Models Performance Quantitative analysis Scaling up Accelerator Dashboard Timesheet Human resources  Bottom line  When we think of our work as the work of a…

A radical pause in a meeting

For two minutes we sat there on Zoom and said nothing. We had just concluded a period of intense conversation. Thrashing out details. And then words escaped me….

Who hired the knowledge worker?

Do you work with metal? Wood? No, I work with knowledge. I mine it, I process it, I chop it up into tiny pieces, I study it, I…

Where do you have your best ideas?

At the start of my how to have ideas workshops, I ask where do people have their best ideas. People often say things like running, taking the dog…

New developments in ‘i’

Engineers have announced today some astounding new breakthroughs in their latest version of i. This technology is completely free and open-source.

100 posts in 100 days for engineers (and other humans)

Dear reader,  Thank you for following my writing. It means a lot to me. To mark my 18th year of blogging, I am writing 100 posts in 100…

Returning to the centre

Whenever I enter a period of calm, a quietening, I instinctively want to turn to reflective writing. Writing like this. It feels like I am speaking to an…

Where we make but also where we take

When it comes to regenerative design, it’s not just where we make but also where we take that matters. For the last two decades, engineers (and other humans)…

The Systems Bookcase at the Houses of Parliament

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending the launch at Parliament of Building Blocks to Transform the Built Environment – a manifesto to turn the climate emergency into…

Inventory of sleeper train journeys

2024 2023 2017 2013 2011  2010 2009 2008 2007  2006 2004  2001 2000 1999 1990

Bristol to Glasgow via the Caledonian Sleeper

While it is possible to go direct from Bristol to Edinburgh, and from Bristol to Glasgow with one change, it is a long route and involves spending a…

How much does your website weigh?

It’s a funny question. How much does my website weigh? Is it heavy? It is light? I have no way of knowing.  But I like the question, because…

Having a second and third idea

Having ideas can be hard, especially when we already have a first idea. How do we trick our brain into thinking that we should go in search of…

What if every time we built something the world got better?

It is a simple question. What if every time we built something the world got better? Not just in the places we construct but in all the places…