Clarity in a Noisy World
Journalist, broadcaster and editorial consultant. I help people and organisations think for themselves.
I’ve spent 50 years asking questions for a living. Local newspapers first, then Fleet Street, then the broadcast newsrooms of ITN, NBC and SABC. That training never leaves you. You check the source, you question the claim and you take nothing on authority alone.
There’s more noise now than at any point in those 50 years, and it comes at us from two directions. Organisations are drowning in machine-made content that sounds like everyone and no one. Individuals are drowning in experts, systems and gurus telling them how to live. The answer to both is the same discipline, and it’s the one I’ve practised throughout my working life. Independent judgement.
For organisations
AI can produce more words in an afternoon than a newsroom once managed in a year. What it can’t produce is judgement. I work with businesses that want their content to sound like them, stand up to scrutiny and earn trust, with an editor in the room rather than a template in charge. I also train leaders and their teams to communicate clearly, drawing on decades spent in front of cameras and microphones.
For individuals
Some of the noise isn’t corporate at all. It’s the parade of authorities telling capable people how to think, heal and live. I work one-to-one with people who are done outsourcing their own judgement and want to hear themselves clearly again. There’s no programme to follow and no guru at the front of the room, mine included, telling you what to do. Quite the opposite.
Elsewhere
I write Reflections from a Glitter Ball on Substack and co-host the Is It Bloody Working? podcast with Alexia Leachman, with whom I also co-founded Ladder of Growth, a measurement framework for human development. I’m writing a book, Say Goodbye to Gods and Gurus, about what happens when we stop deferring to higher authority. For talks, interviews and press enquiries, my speaking and media page has everything you’ll need.
If any of this sounds like a conversation you’ve been looking to have, get in touch.