Episode lands Monday 9th February.

I promote progress over perfection, collegiate working practices, life long learning and curiosity.

I also promote effective time management, goal setting and goal management.

I'm pretty good with my alignment across the board except I don't give myself enough sleep time, which has an impact by the end of the week. I'd say a 9 or 10 on everything except that, and for that I give myself a 5. And whilst I manage everything else effectively, I still don't exercise enough (I am in pain a lot so I have a ready made excuse which I sometimes hide behind). The poor sleeping patterns and the lack of exercise are areas I must improve in as this does affect my health overall.

A realistic first step is to go to sleep on average 1 hour a night per week rather than force myself to change my patterns immediately. Currently I am not typically settling down till 2am so for the rest of this week I will set a reminder to go to bed at 1am, and settle down no later than 130am. Next week, from Monday, I will settle down no later than 1am, which means bed no later than 1230am.

Common Dis-Empowering Beliefs Companies Hold

(Often unconsciously, often “just how things are”)

🧠 About People

• “People need to be closely managed or they’ll slack off.”→ Breeds micromanagement, kills ownership.

• “Only senior people can be trusted with big decisions.”→ Bottlenecks everything and disempowers talent.

• “If we give people too much freedom, standards will drop.”→ Confuses control with quality.

• “Some people are just not leadership material.”→ Freezes growth and locks people into labels.

🏢 About Work & Performance

• “Busy means productive.”→ Rewards activity over outcomes and burns people out.

• “We don’t have time to stop and think.”→ Guarantees repeated mistakes.

• “Mistakes must be avoided at all costs.”→ Creates fear cultures and risk aversion.

• “This is how it’s always been done.”→ Institutionalises stagnation.

🧱 About Structure & Hierarchy

• “Decisions must go up the chain.”→ Slows response and disempowers those closest to the work.

• “Our department’s success matters more than the whole system.”→ Creates silos and internal competition.

• “Rules exist to prevent failure, not enable success.”→ Turns governance into obstruction.

🔄 About Change & Innovation

• “Change is disruptive and risky.”→ Treats adaptation as a threat instead of a necessity.

• “Innovation is something other teams do.”→ Outsources thinking and accountability.

• “We’ll deal with that when it becomes a real problem.”→ Ensures problems become crises.

💬 About Voice & Communication

• “It’s not safe to say what you really think.”→ Silences insight and breeds compliance, not commitment.

• “Disagreement is a sign of disloyalty.”→ Replaces truth with politeness.

• “Senior leaders already know the answer.”→ Stops learning dead.

⚙️ About Capability & Growth

• “We can’t do that with the people we have.”→ Blocks development and creative problem-solving.

• “Training is a cost, not an investment.”→ Ensures skills decay over time.

• “If someone is good at their job, don’t move them.”→ Punishes competence.

It took me a long time to learn the lesson that 99% of staff will always work better when they feel two things: 1. Trusted to do the job. 2. Supported when they need it.

That's it- no profound statements to bamboozle the mind, just two simple feelings to create with your staff (or family, or community group etc).

Example Project:

Rebuilding and migrating darreninform.com and the ThinkWORKS community to the Mastermind platform (Q1 focus).

1. The Strategic Concept (The Why)

Why am I doing this?

To create a calm, coherent digital home that brings together my thinking, writing, podcasting, and community — and supports sustainable work rather than constant firefighting.

This is not about having a “better website”.It’s about reducing fragmentation, improving focus, and making it easier for the right people to engage with my work.

2. The Plan (From A to Z)

What does the journey look like?

• Start Point (A):A fragmented WIX site, broken community tools, scattered content, and rising friction.

• End Goal (Z):A stable, human-centred site and forum where content, conversation, and direction all live together.

• Milestones along the way:

• Core site pages rebuilt

• Community rooms recreated

• Priority content migrated

• Weekly content rhythm stabilised

These milestones mark progress — but on their own, they don’t explain how they’ll be achieved.

3. Strategies for Each Milestone

How do I actually reach each step?

For example:

• Milestone: Core site pages rebuilt

• Strategy: Build structure first, polish later

• Action: Draft Home, Start Here, ThinkWORKS Hub, Books, Contact using consistent messaging

• Review: Does the site feel coherent, even if imperfect?

• Milestone: Community rebuilt

• Strategy: Fewer rooms, clearer purpose

• Action: Create Welcome post, room descriptions, Take A Bite template

• Review: Can a new visitor understand what to do in under 2 minutes?

Each milestone has:

• a strategy

• a set of actions

• a review point

• and space to adjust
  

4. Remedy Strategies (When Reality Intervenes)

What if I fall behind or lose momentum?

Planned remedies include:

• Reducing scope (migrate less content, not more)

• Pausing non-essential pages

• Protecting the weekly podcast as the non-negotiable

• Shifting timelines without abandoning the vision

The goal is not perfection — it’s course correction without self-judgement.

The Bite

Planning isn’t about control. It’s about thinking ahead so that when things wobble, you don’t.