Be argued with,
not just heard.
I work with firms and senior leaders on the craft behind authority: how positions areframed, how documents move boards, and how judgement becomes visible to the people who rely on it.
Three practices. One argument about clarity.
Every engagement, keynote and essay starts from the same observation: in professionalservices, the quality of your thinking is judged through the quality of how it is put across — and thesecond can be learnt faster than the first.
Advisory & consulting
Close working engagements with partners, boards and leadership teams: rebuilding the papers,meetings and messages through which their judgement actually travels.
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Keynote speaking
Conference keynotes built as arguments, not topics — on voice, judgement and the first ninetyseconds in which rooms decide who to take seriously.
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Writing & commentary
Essays, house styles and ghostwritten positions for leaders who would rather be quoted accuratelythan frequently — plus The Witting Note, a monthly letter.
Read & subscribe →Authority is granted in the first ninety seconds.
Long before a board reads your appendix or an audience weighs your evidence, they havedecided how to listen. That decision is not charisma. It is structure — and structure can be built.
Position before polish
A clear claim survives a hostile room. Beautiful prose defending an unclearposition survives nothing. We argue first, word-craft second.
Documents carry judgement
Your board paper is your judgement made portable. If the document cannotargue without you in the room, the thinking is not finished.
Rehearsal is strategy
The pause, the open, the walk away from the lectern — staging is notdecoration. It is the difference between a talk and an event.
Ways of working together
Board-paper & voice programmes
A structured season with your leadership group: diagnostic, editorial working sessions and a writtenhandover that outlives the engagement.
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Keynotes & masterclasses
Forty-five minute arguments for conference main stages, ninety-minute working sessions forleadership offsites, half-day masterclasses for partner groups.
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Workshops for teams
Small-group workshops that turn house style from a PDF nobody reads into a habit the team candefend — papers, client letters and the meetings between them.
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Ghostwriting & house style
Position papers, op-eds and the standing arguments a firm needs — written with leaders, publishedunder their names, held to their standard.
Read the approach →Diagnostic, editorial, handover.
No mystery, no open-ended retainers. An advisory season has a beginning, a middle you canfeel from week three, and an end you can plan around.
Diagnostic fortnight
I read what your organisation actually writes and sit in the meetings whereits judgement travels. You receive a written map of where voice is strong and where it leaks.
Editorial working sessions
From week three we work live documents — funding cases, promotion papers,keynotes — until each argument holds without its author in the room.
Written handover
The engagement closes with what changed, what to protect, and what to revisitin a year — a document your successors can act on.
Recent writing
The meeting where you were first ignored
Rooms decide how to hear you long before you finish your first slide. Whatthat decision is actually about — and the two structural moves that change it.
Why your best people write worst
The promotion system rewards certainty; good writing requires its absence.How firms break the loop without dumbing down their thinking.
Rehearse the pauses, not the words
Twelve keynotes staged this season taught the same lesson: the script isfinished when its silences are. Notes on choreographing a talk.
Tell me the room you need to land.
A board, a conference stage, a partnership vote. Describe themoment; I will tell you honestly whether I can move it.