Why write at all?

My blog has always had the post-script title, “the thoughts, impressions & sometimes the ramblings of a digital leader”. That word “ramblings” still matters to me. It gives permission for the writing to be human. Not everything has to arrive perfectly polished. Sometimes the value is in the working out. Often the reply to these ramblings that the reader adds is way more important than the original content itself, I write to hear what others think about the same subject quite often I think.

Something happens in January every year: a line from a meeting, a moment of frustration, a piece of music, a sentence that might matter later. It ends up in a note somewhere. Then another. Then another. That is often how I write. The capture of connected, and sometimes not connected, thoughts gradually creates a framework.

Eventually those notes become a blog. Not always neatly. Not always quickly.

The habit has stayed because writing is one of the ways I make sense of work, leadership, change and the oddness of trying to keep moving forward while the world keeps shifting around us.

Its my memory bank in so many ways but also its where I work out which way is up in a complex world that never seems to cease evolving (and revolving).

The work reason: writing helps me think like a better digital leader

The most useful thing blogging has given me is not an audience. It is clarity. A thought that feels obvious in my head can look thin on the page. A phrase that worked in a meeting can suddenly look like jargon. A leadership instinct needs evidence. A hunch needs structure. Writing helps me join the story together, and storytelling remains one of the most useful ways to create engagement.

Writing about the modern CIO, the need to “infect the business with enthusiasm for change”, and the risk of seeing IT only as a cost centre has helped me sharpen, and sometimes change, what I believe.

It has also made me think harder about the impression a digital leader leaves behind. Not the job title. Not the slide deck. The feeling people have after the conversation. Whether they feel clearer, more confident, more included, or just slightly more buried under words. I wrote about that in Reflections on the impressions you leave behind as a digital leader, after getting some feedback from one of the best leaders I ever did work with.

Writing as a leadership discipline, not a vanity project

I do not think of blogging as broadcasting. Or at least I try not to. When it works, it is more like a rehearsal. A place to test the words before they are needed in anger. A place to strip away technobabble. A place to ask whether the thing I am describing would make sense to someone who does not spend their week inside digital delivery plans, architecture debates or board papers.

That matters because words shape whether people lean in or switch off. Change and transformation with a digital catalyst can sound cold if we let it. Platforms. Products. Data. Automation. AI. All useful words, but only useful if people can see themselves in that world. Years ago I wrote about digital leadership being “all in the words”.

I still believe that. Digital leadership really is “all in the words”. Openness, simplification, trust, relationships and the effort to turn people into fans rather than passive users have been with me throughout this blogging journey, but they have also been challenged and reshaped by other people’s opinions.

The blog as a bridge between sectors, roles and chapters.

The blog has become a bridge between the chapters of my career, and perhaps my life, although I did not realise that at the time. Health, retail, government, asset management, property and digital leadership can look very different from the outside. The context, language, pressures and acronyms change, but the same themes return: trust, clarity, adoption, delivery, culture, usefulness and the patience to take people with you. One early piece came from the excitement of spending time with CIOs from different industries and realising how much of what we do is interchangeable: less about implementing the solution, more about achieving transformation.

Writing regularly helps you spot patterns that are not always visible when you are living inside the work. A problem that felt unique in one organisation can reappear elsewhere wearing a different badge. Healthcare might emphasise clinical confidence. Retail, customer pace. Government, scale and trust. Property, place, data and sustainability. The sectors differ, but the leadership questions often rhyme.

That is why posts such as Digital First Mindset matter to me. They were not really about technology first, despite the title. They were about creating a shared way of thinking, a way for people beyond the digital function to feel part of the change rather than on the receiving end of it. The same is true of Revolutionising delivery through a product mindset, which helped me work through the repeatable idea that delivery gets better when the customer, colleague or citizen is genuinely at the centre of what is being built, not simply referenced in the opening slide of a business case.

The more personal posts have played a part in that bridge too. Manual Of Me was written at a moment of joining somewhere new and wanting to be useful quickly, but really it was another attempt to make leadership more understandable and a little more human. Manual of me though has become part of who I am, four different roles in succession I have been able to reuse this concept to get up and running as fast as I can with new colleagues.

Take stock, what is next… was about moving into a new chapter without becoming trapped by the old one. That balance is hard. You want to bring the learning with you but not become the person who only talks about where they used to work. Writing helps me test that balance. It lets me ask what is genuinely repeatable, what needs to be left behind, and what needs to be reshaped for the place, people and moment in front of me.

How I hope it has helped others.

If the blog has helped anyone else, I hope it has done so in small and practical ways. Perhaps someone has felt a little less alone with a leadership dilemma, or found a way into a topic that is often made more complicated than it needs to be.

That is why I often reach for images, phrases and stories rather than management theory. Too much acorn and not enough oak was a way of describing the tension between quick, point solutions and the bigger strategic tree we are all trying to grow. Like so many blogs that have been written by me though it also came from an ‘off the cuff’ phrase said by a great colleague at the time. It is not a perfect metaphor, but perhaps that is why it works. It gives people something to hold on to when the conversation could otherwise disappear into roadmaps, backlogs, platforms and dependencies.

The same thought sits behind Ditch the generic terms to build better engagement. I have always believed that language can either invite people in or push them further away. If a post like that has helped even one person rethink how they explain digital change to their own business, then it has probably done its job. Not because it provides a perfect answer, but because it encourages a better question. What are we really trying to say, and who are we trying to bring with us?

There is a human thread to this too. Digital First Leaders was about presence, connection and how leaders show up when so much of work is mediated through screens. Being part of a group… was about support, belonging and the need for people to have something to lean against. Perhaps that is the bit of the blog I value most. If it occasionally offers reassurance, a practical idea, a phrase that sticks, or just the confidence to keep going through another difficult stretch of change, then that feels more than enough.

The stream-of-consciousness blogs I try to write at events such as Gartner have a similar purpose. Letting my brain and fingers run with what I am hearing helps me remember the content, but it also gives others who were not there access to something close to the raw material. One of the best compliments I received was from a CIO trade press editor who described my write-up of Tim Berners-Lee as being written by James Joyce. At least, I think it was a compliment.

The annual review: memory, discipline and honesty.

The annual review blog has become the clearest example of blogging as a discipline of noticing. It’s the place where I am at my most vulnerable I guess, the ups, the downs, the highs the lows of every year laid out for me to reflect on. Perhaps more than anywhere else in the blog as a whole this is for me.

In 2025, the review of the year I wrote that I had been doing it for 13 years, starting each January by capturing “meaningful” things before shaping them much later. The format has changed with me. What began closer to a mix tape of favourite songs became a record of work, then widened into books, films, restaurants, events, places and people. From The year that was 2014, with music, books and the surprise move to Ireland, to the more recent long-form reviews, the archive has become less a report of what I did and more a diary of what was shaping me.

The earlier reviews carry some lovely clues. 2014 still feels like a cultural scrapbook, with Tensnake, Bombay Bicycle Club, SOHN, Matt Haig and a life suddenly based in Ireland. By 2018 the work and travel threads were clearer: healthcare transformation across three continents, three very different trips to the USA, Harry Potter World, a Mustang down the Florida Keys, Miami with Kendrick and Drake as the soundtrack, and the reminder that America is never one generic place. By 2024, the habit had grown into Staithes, Restaurant Number 20, board games and the muddy joy of walking on the North Yorkshire coast.

Other years show the same blend in different proportions. 2019 reads like upheaval and motion: a relationship ending, two house moves, leaving a job I loved, starting one I was unsure of, and travel to Prague, Orlando, Seattle, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Dublin, Wales and the Cotswolds. 2020 is different again: a new job, a new family home, a four-legged friend, a blended family, and the attempt to hold on to something good in a year none of us had planned.

A few work moments stand out because travel made the learning sharper, not because the destinations were the point. In 2018, moving between countries reminded me that questions of trust, adoption, clinical confidence and lasting change travel with you. In 2023, New York and Dublin offered different reflections on progress: what technology might make possible, and the more uncomfortable reminder that good ideas still need pace, ownership and execution. In 2020, the move into High Street Healthcare brought another perspective: a familiar brand, a new remit, a new family home and a changed world all arriving together.

The personal ingredients that make the work writing better.

The personal ingredients are not there to soften the work writing. They are part of what makes it useful. Music, travel, books, culture, mental health, friendship and the occasional awkward attempt at poetry influence how I write about leadership, change and digital transformation. Without them, the blog could become only a sequence of opinions about work. With them, it becomes a way of asking what the work means to people.

Writing about Digital & Mental Health, after listening to Matt Haig talk about the speed of modern life, made the digital question feel bigger than platforms, convenience or adoption. It asked what pace does to people, how constant connectivity changes the way we cope, and whether leaders notice the human cost of the systems and habits they help create. That makes the work writing more careful. Progress is only progress if people can live with it.

The poetry attempts did something similar, although with more red face and less confidence. Posts like The Goal and States of being (Beatless Mix) made room for uncertainty, rhythm, metaphor and feeling. All of that helps when trying to explain complex work without hiding behind corporate language.

The personal ingredients have therefore shaped the work writing by making it less mechanical and more human. They remind me that leadership writing should not just describe what changed; it should help people feel why it mattered, what it asked of them, and where they might fit within it.

Perhaps that is the leadership lesson in all of this: people follow change more readily when they can recognise the human being trying to explain it.

What blogging has taught me.

Blogging has taught me a few practical things about leading, communicating and staying open enough to change my mind.

  • Writing regularly teaches you to notice more. A passing comment, a phrase in a meeting, a frustration with a piece of language, or a moment of energy in a room can all become useful if you are paying attention.
  • Publishing teaches you to be brave, but careful. Once an idea is outside your head it can be challenged, improved or misunderstood, so the responsibility is to be clear without pretending to be certain about everything.
  • Reflection is a leadership discipline. It slows the work down just enough to ask what really happened, what was learnt, what should be repeated and what should be left behind.
  • Clear language creates better engagement. People are more likely to join a change when they understand the words being used, can see themselves in the story and feel that the person explaining it has made the effort to be understood.

The lesson underneath all of that is that writing is not what I do after the thinking is finished. It is often the thinking itself. It helps me test whether a view is useful, whether a message is fair, whether a phrase will invite people in or push them away, and whether I am still curious enough to let the answer change.

Why I need to keep doing it.

I suspect I will keep telling myself I should write less. I also suspect I will keep failing. The habit is too useful now. Writing helps me remember what happened and understand what it meant. It gives shape to the work, the people, the mistakes, the music, the meetings, the places and the moments that would otherwise blur together.

That is why I think I will keep going. Not because every post lands perfectly, or every thought needs an audience, but because writing still helps me make sense of leadership and change. If it occasionally gives someone else a phrase, a question or a little reassurance, that is reason enough.

Perhaps the call to arms is simply this: write something. Use the tools that now exist to help you start, but do not let them remove the part only you can bring. Step a little outside your comfort zone. Write from the heart as well as the head. Reveal enough for the reader to recognise a human being, not just a role. If a review of the year feels too much, start smaller. Open a note. Add one line when something makes you think, smile, wince or learn. Keep a rough list of songs, places, books, films, work moments, mistakes and people who helped. Do not worry about the shape until later. By the end of the year, you may have more than a list. You may have a map of what changed and why it mattered.

See you on your blog site soon.