We discussed whether to till or rake it in. Tilling is a controversial practice because it breaks up the soils microbiome diminishing its potential - we decided to rake it in instead, minimal disruption and increasing the nutrients for a hopeful and rich harvest to come.

Assessing what’s really here - what’s really needed before making a major decision is the way of things on the farm. We must find the dirt truth to know what or how to close the gap with the current state and what we hope to come in a future state. We want to do the same for ourselves at work.

I’ve had several clients over the past few weeks talk about the pace of change with AI influencing our capabilities with such massive force. It’s exciting exhilarating even and some of my clients have moved back into the ‘startup grind - sleeping under their desk to ship new features and capabilities as fast as possible’. And they ask themselves what am I role modelling to my team - how do I demonstrate balance in life and work and still get the results we all want with the enthusiasm we’re eager to share.

Assessing what’s really here. How are you really?

The question I offered this leader is how are you really? Meaning what’s your level of mental clarity? your energy level? If you’re 10 out of 10 keep going if you drop to and 8 or 7, maybe you need a walk around the block, a quick set of burpees or jumping jacks to get your blood flowing…or another cup of coffee. Whatever it is to get back to a 10 is what you want to figure out. Then there’s also the notion of rest - if you’ve been going at it for weeks on end maybe a 4 day weekend or a full Saturday or Sunday off. Whatever it is that enables you to recharge.

On the farm this is the most intense time of the year, and I’ve added puppies to the mix and thankfully a highly skilled farm hand. We are all resting when we need and driving hard within the weather windows for the tasks at hand to get us ready for planting. In many ways it’s make or break - if I don’t prune the currants coming in and fertilize, their yield will be lower, there’s a time window for that - this year I may have missed that as I noticed on my walk through the garden this evening assessing all the tasks still to be done. I will try anyway and see how it goes. So much is make or break and so the drive to get shit done is real. As is the drive in this AI accelerated tech building world.

The leaders feel it - and I’m glad they are stopping to ask - how am I really and what do I need to get back to full on ready.

Restful play :D

Here’s how to think about how to create your own bucket list by explaining how I got to the buckets for the Farm.

First, consider the stage of life you’re in - what’s important for you to accomplish. Each stage of life has an overarching ethos or theme.

I’m in Autumn so it’s paramount to maximize my harvest - When I am laser focused I can ensure every day, every moment maximizes the yield I could get in the areas of my life that have the greatest impact for longevity and well being. So those buckets represented food and financial security, joy, health and love.

Last week I got two puppies for the farm - Border Collie/Bernese Mountain Dog mix, lots of energy! - I write this while one puppy attempts to chew my slipper and the other is ripping apart a piece of cardboard. Autumn wisdom, meet spring energy, for sure.

I didn't arrive at the Farm buckets randomly — the framework that helped me was Tony Robbins’ four main seasonal stages of life—

• Spring (Ages 0–21) - Growth & Learning: A period focused on nurturing, education, and developing the foundational skills needed for adulthood.

• Summer (Ages 22–42) - Testing & Challenge: A time of high pressure, building a career, and managing relationships. Individuals transition from protection to facing societal realities.

• Autumn (Ages 43–63) - Harvesting & Realization: Reaping the rewards of earlier efforts, characterized by increased wisdom, emotional growth, and reaping rewards.

• Winter (Ages 64+) - Reflection & Mentoring: A shift towards mentoring, contributing to others, and shifting focus from proving oneself to enjoying life’s fruits

With this context in mind - ask yourself what would make a great year - as Thoreau wrote in Walden pond, one that would allow you to ‘suck the marrow of life’. Your answers will align with your purpose, which is bigger, longer-term and more important. By answering in this way, you can then embody excellence in action in pursuit of those buckets.

When you have some ideas to answer these questions, aim to then simplify into a few key themes maybe across career, love/connection/friendship, physical/mental/spiritual health, finances. These become your ‘buckets’ or areas of focus. From there go back to my previous post to find the real dirt of the now and define your aspiration for the year, in that gap you’ll find out what actions you need to take.

I hope this helps - sometimes it’s good to talk it through, just like we did in that 30-minute call - 30 minutes isn’t a long investment to create the clarity that enables massive action!

Good luck - cause we certainly all need that from time to time and God Bless.

Spring energy meets actual dirt

The garden at this time of year, is NUTS. It is full-on, full-speed, everything-happening-all-at-once. I hear the same leaders in Tech - AI is driving speed like never before and everyone is under pressure to adopt

I have to get the greenhouses ready. I have clean up of ‘the sins of the winter revealed’ I have lots of off farm priorities. And, clearly didn’t feel my life was quite chaotic enough, I’ve decided to add two puppies in to the mix with Emmett. (Because nothing says “Strategic Stillness” like four-legged chaos-monsters chewing on my irrigation lines).

So, how do we prioritize when the weather, the business, and the puppies demand our attention all at once?

Vision/Goal check: Three-Bucket Filter

It gets easier when everything is tied to the Vision. This year, I am filtering every “urgent” task through three buckets:

1. The Offering (The Integrated Life): Creating a new world of personal and team development workshops. This is the big pivot—merging the boardroom and the soil. If it doesn’t build this bridge, it’s a “weed.”

2. The Farm (The Core Mission): Streamlining to grow amazing food. Partnering with Pearl Morissette to provide exactly what they need while maximizing food security for my community. This is about sustainability—not just for the land, but for me.

3. The Joy (The Sacred Space): If the work overwhelms the spaciousness for joy—like our new family reunion tradition in the “Land Between”—then the work is failing. Love underpins dedication and drive. The rock, shield, and water of the Kawarthas are non-negotiable.

The Reality Check: Nature’s Prioritization Tool

Even with these buckets, the week-to-week is a constant vigilance. The beauty of “actual dirt” is that it doesn’t lie.

On the farm, the weather sets the deadline. The plants have to go in the ground now or there is no harvest. Period.

To manage the “Gap” between where I am and the vision, I use this framework

Step 1: Vision/Goals - create my crystal clear buckets of goals that align to the vision. Across my tech based clients these are things like Agentic AI to drive efficiency and innovation; Operational optimization; Culture that enable people to thrive

Step 2: Once you have those look at the real deep down dirt of where you are - no sugar coating, no optimistic tendency - the absolute truth. This give you your gap

Step 3: Fill the gap daily, weekly and review monthly with actions that move the needs against the buckets. Any progress is good progress and builds amazing momentum and morale on the team

Wild leeks coming up

In the garden, if I’m not crystal clear on the problem I’ve got to solve, something major will f-up. The stakes are usually measured in bushels, but the stress feels remarkably similar to a missed quarterly target.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the potatoes and the wisdom I gained from failure. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the Japanese beetles. They were horrendous last year—metallic, crunchy, and seemingly obsessed with destroying everything I love. Two seasoned, wise farmers—my neighbor Tim, a 4th-generation cattleman, and Paul, who has been gardening for 50+ years—offered the same solution

If the plant has all the nutrition it needs it will have immunity to handle the pest.

Nothing else needs to be done except ensuring the plant is optimally healthy. Simple, right?

Well, I don’t know how to solve that yet, especially for my Sharon Roses. They are divine. Their scent is a penetrating, engulfing beauty that makes me forget I ever worked in tech. I make an elixir of their petals; I infuse raspberry jam with them. I want them to be invincible…and they attract an huge amount of Japanese beetles.

The “Symptom” is the beetle. The “Reactive Fix” is a trap or an insecticide. But the Real Problem is at the root. If I solve for the soil now, I’m not just saving the roses—I’m protecting the Muscat grapes (the source of my favourite jelly), the fruit trees, and the wild grapes.

The garden, in a way, makes it much easier to see the problem. It’s in living colour and the consequences immediate. In working life, figuring out if we’re focused on the real problem is much harder.

The Boardroom Beetle

I’m currently working with several Executive teams who are struggling to find the “signal.” They want to ensure that they—and every IC in their organization—are solving the most important problems rather than just stepping on beetles.

The Signal: The Ladder of Inference When pressure hits, executives tend to sprint up the “Ladder of Inference.” This is a mental model that describes how we move from raw data to action.

The rungs:

• The Bottom Rung (Selection): You only see the “beetles” (a missed deadline or sub optimal result) and ignore the “soil” (the broken process).

• The Middle Rung (Assumptions): You decide the team is “poor” before you’ve checked if they have the tools they need.

• The Top Rung (Action): You “spray an insecticide or lay trap” (a frantic re-org) and wonder why the plants are still suffering six months later.

My advice to the CEO? Stop climbing for a second. Check your rungs.

The Diagnostic Framework

If you want to move from a reactive “fix” to a root-cause “action,” ask these questions:

1. What are the assumptions, beliefs, and facts about this “problem”? (Are we looking at a beetle or a nutrient deficiency?)

2. What would have to be true, and what would have to be false, if this were the real solution? (The Roger Martin “Diaminds” approach—if we “kill the pest” and things don’t improve, what does that tell us?)

3. The Emotional Check: What is my reaction? Am I “bracing” for impact? Do I need five minutes of Strategic Stillness before I dive in?

4. The Problem Statement: Draft it, and then double check is it the root?

5. The Value Test: Is this problem worth our time, or are we just busy-reacting because it feels better than silence for a moment more?

The signal

The garden gives us obvious signals: thrive, wilt or under-attack. In business, we have the “luxury” of over-functioning our way through a nutrient deficiency at worst, until the whole field dies.

Don’t wait for the harvest to fail. Put down the insecticide, step away from the spreadsheet, and go back to check the soil.

DM me if you’d like a pdf of the full problem solving worksheet and references

Once our seedlings start so does the inspiration of what’s to come. Each day I check for the tiniest signs of growth, I check the soil moisture, look for aphids or other pests and generally track progress row by row. (I’m often talking to the sprouts, though they rarely have much to say back ;)

When the plants go in the ground I get to do the same thing on a grander scale. It may sound like work but it’s actually inspirational - to be steeped in the flow of progress, watching for any change big or small creates a pull of momentum that at times feels effortless. I’m being carried forward towards my vision.

In our working lives we have to find our way to walk the rows. To connect effort to the big picture and to track how close or far we are from the goals on that path.

Some things seem impossible to know - working with an application security team they offered their current way of knowing is that nothing bad happens. It’s the "Crows in the Corn" metric: if the field isn't screaming, everything must be fine. But as any farmer knows, the quietest pests are often the ones doing the most damage

The opportunity is to see the effort - the daily practices, the teamwork, the readiness drills as the progress on the way to ensure nothing ‘bad’ happens or if it does that the team is ready for it.

The opportunity is to see the effort—the daily practices, the teamwork, the readiness drills—as the progress itself. We are looking for metrics that reliably reveal cause and effect and are persistent and predictive. In the garden, I don’t wait for the plant to wilt to know it needs water; I check the soil. In business, we shouldn’t wait for a security breach (or a missed Q3 target) to know the system is thirsty. We “walk the rows” not because we’re looking for trouble, but because the magic formula for success is hidden in the tiny, daily shifts that most people are too busy to notice.

Finding this formula keeps you in the flow of learning and on a path to a harvest that isn’t just a lucky break, but an inevitable result.

Goal setting is a core function of most anything worth doing. Getting crystal clear on the results you want to achieve and how you’ll measure progress are fundamental elements to ensure success, and so is what it will feel like.

Envisioning getting to that end vitalizes your commitment and if it serves your core values, purpose and possibly a greater good it creates a natural pull that while still requires effort, carries us forward when it feels hard.

This year’s garden is a big deal for me. It’s the second year I’m running things on my own. While I proved I could do it, it took a lot of effort. At times it felt lonely, overwhelming and really hard.

I want more joy, ease and flow this year and the only way to do that is with this kind of clarity. To walk through the garden I wish to grow, to imagine making food for people I care about and that care about this way of living, eating and caring creates a draw that is beyond me. That feels ethereal. Spiritual. Though, admittedly the ehereal gets disrupted every time the water lines break and I’m standing in a puddle at 6 AM.

To get here I have some personal goals that will go hand in hand - a trifecta of synergy I am beyond excited for. Health, wealth and love/connection in nautre. I cannot imagine a more powerful combination.

The next key ingredient is momentum - the small and big daily actions that will carry me there. I have to show up. I have to do the work. and be brutally honest along the way, leaning into any discomfort with curiosity for what is amiss, what needs to be adjusted or changed.

It is rare, apparently, to accomplish this. The statistics are fairly dismal —research from the Association for Talent Development suggests that simply having an idea only gives you a 10% chance of seeing it through. When you move from 'deciding' to 'planning how' and then 'committing to a daily action,' that probability jumps up to 95%. This is the alchemy of process: it turns a vague wish into an inevitable harvest.

The tools I use on the farm to support this process is a planting guide for my growing zone - the best one I’ve found thus far is either Clyde’s garden planner of Seedtime online planner. Imagining what I love to cook and new recipe’s I’ve yet to try with ingredients I may never have grown gives me the specifics. My previous and current daily journals provide the wisdom and reality checks. Envisioning the garden gives me the rest.

I hope this inspires you to pick your goals back up or double down on the ones you’re working on. Just remember, God loves a plan, and to see if you’ll keep that 95% commitment when the local deer population treats your goals as an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Just like in any growing company and certainly the world of organic and regenerative farming, “culture fit” is more important than the “skill set,” because I can teach someone to drive a tractor, but I can’t easily teach them to care about soil microbiology or the “why” behind my 40-acre vision.

1. “Leading Indicators” of my Great Farm Hand

Don’t look at their last “harvest” (the resume). Look at “weeding, seeding, watering” (their daily habits):

• Abundance: I want someone who notices the wilt and then adjusts their watering schedule to never stress the plants again.

• Reality vs. Romanticism: You’re always calculating yield vs effort; considering minimal viable experiment to produce greatest learning .

• Systems Thinking: Regenerative farming is about cycles and systems to support them. I want someone who understands that how they wash the harvest bins affects the shelf life of the crop and the longevity of the equipment.

2. The “Culture Code” on my Farm

Here we operate with:

• Radical Transparency: If you hit a rock with the tiller, tell me immediately. (In startups, we call this “failing fast” and “post-mortems”).

• Owner Mindset: If you see a leak in the irrigation, you don’t walk past it because it’s not “on your list.” You fix it because you are a steward of the harvest.

• Bias for Action: On a farm, “waiting for instructions” while a storm is rolling in is a “churn event.” You need someone who moves.

• Systems thinking: When you plan your task for the day you’re already thinking of what that will mean over the week or month to come if it will create efficiency or move the bigger work to a later time; when you plan a row or carrots you’re not just thinking of crop rotation for this year but what that means next year and the year after - where you’ll need to move the crops to maintain and promote soil health and reduce pests. You value the long term health of the entire ecosystem over a single harvest.

3. Sourcing my “Startup-Minded” Farmers

• “Internship” Graduates: Have you just finished a season at an established North American “Scale-up” farms (like Singing Frogs Farm in California or Stone Barns in NY). Do you have the “Vision” but are looking for a place where they can have more “Ownership.”?

• Pivoters: Have you just quit a 60-hour-a-week tech job because you want to get away from the screen and get your hands in the dirt. You already have the professional discipline; you just need the “onboarding” to the soil.

4. The “Trial Period” (The Germination Test)

Expect to join me on a “Paid Work Day” in addition to a traditional interview to secure the role

5. The “Interview” Question for the Visionary Farm Hand:

• Scout instinct question: “Tell me about a time you noticed something was ‘off’ in a system you worked in and what you did about it.”

• Owner mindset: “If you were the Lead of these 40 acres and I was away for a week, what are the three things you’d be most obsessed with protecting?”

• Reality vs Romance Question: What was your daily experience like the last place? When have you failed and how did you overcome? What’s the highest degree of commitment you’ve given to something (anything) and tell me about it?

• Systems thinker: when you think of the concept of cause and effect: “In the garden, no action is isolated. Every task creates a ripple. When you approach a task—let’s say, heavy mulching the potato mounds or pruning the tomato suckers—walk me through how you calculate the ‘ripples’ (the cause and effect) of that action

The “Job Description” - Almanac Style

Looking for a “Second-in-Command” for 40 Acres of Truth

The Context: Since 2012, we have operated on the belief that excellence in the boardroom and excellence in the soil are the same thing. Our 40-acre farm—a sanctuary of gardens, ponds, and forests—has supplied Michelin-star restaurants and served as a laboratory for regenerative practices.

But 2021 was a “hundred-year storm” for us. It caused waves that forced us to re-evaluate everything. Now, we are at the precipice.

The Pivot: 2026 is our year of redefinition. We are moving from a traditional commercial model to a diversified “Agro-Experience” ecosystem. Our goal is twofold:

1. Absolute Food Security: Growing enough high-quality food to sustain the stewards of this land year-round.

2. The New Revenue Stream: Launching our luxury yurt/wood-fired hot tub experience and hosting seasonal “Growth Days” and corporate team-building workshops.

The Role: I am looking for a Second-in-Command who wants to get their hands in the dirt and their head into the strategy. You aren’t just “labor”; you are the guardian of the soil while I build the bridges to our new future.

What you’ll be doing:

• Maintaining the “Core Product”: Ensuring our market gardens and fruit orchards maintain the highest organic/regenerative standards.

• Systems Management: Managing irrigation, soil health, and seasonal transitions with a “zero-waste” mindset.

• The “Experience” Support: Assisting with the logistics of our agro-tourism and workshops—ensuring the “stage” (the farm) is as impeccable as the “performance.”

• Walking the Lines: Working directly with me to “check the weather” of the farm and the business every morning.

This is for you if:

• You are tired of “beginner-level” farming and want to see how a professional operation handles a massive strategic pivot.

• You have a “Founder’s Mindset”—you see a broken irrigation line as a “bug” that needs a permanent fix, not a temporary patch.

• You value “Knowledge Equity.” You’ll be mentored by an Executive Coach and Tech Leader who sees every farm chore as a masterclass in leadership.

• You find beauty in the grit. You’re as comfortable discussing revenue streams as you are hilling potatoes.

The Exchange: This is a paid role at [Insert Rate], but the real value is the “Open Book” management style. You will see the “why” behind every decision and participate in the rebuilding of a legacy farm.

DM if you’re interested :)

I walk the fields - Even though I already have an idea of the most important project for the weather window of the day, I still need to go and see. To literally walk the fields, check the soil, look for what’s changed - are there pests, has something happened overnight that I didn’t expect, what else is out there that might affect the work. This not only informs the day’s project, it also enables me to really appreciate what I’m about to do. I get to revel in the beauty of the garden and align myself to the task. This creates a magical combination for work - I am more deeply connected.

Align and Envision. Before I get out there - aligning myself means getting physically and mentally ready - am I all in to the task I’m about to undertake. Am I feeling energized, clear minded, overall full on ready. These are often big tasks that I’m doing by myself - lots can go wrong and if my energy is low because I haven’t eaten enough protein or my mind is distracted I need to slow down, align and get clear. Especially if it involves the tractor - in those cases I often take a moment to envision the task. What am I going to need, the order of things and I psych myself up. After all, if I make the wrong move I could seriously hurt myself or ruin something. The number of dents, bruises and damage I’ve done over the years is not trivial and there’s not one farmer I know that hasn’t done the same. Who knew being a regenerative organic farmer could be so rewarding and also so dangerous1

Getting to peak. The leaders I coach that are operating at their peak performance have a way of seeing and checking. They have a morning routine that gets them energized for the day, clear minded and focused. It might be a workout, breakfast with the kids, mediating. But they have a practice. And before they open slack, email or check texts. Making a wrong move on the tractor ruins a fence; making a wrong move in a high-stakes meeting ruins a quarter. Both come from a lack of focus.

I check in on my Ways of seeing - a version of walking the fields to get depth of context, check assumptions and check in. The GM of Toyota I coached some time back started his day by walking the manufacturing floor. They had a zero goal for injuries and when you walked into the building the number you saw on your way through the gates was days since last incident. Imagine if our tech teams started with that - how that might shift the orientation of our work. Or maybe a countdown to launch the next big feature. Or what would a "Days Since Last Burnout" clock look like for your team? Whatever your ‘way of seeing’ is, checking on the most important aspects of the work you want your team to accomplish, be deliberate about how you can get that context.

Walking the floor gave this GM maximum context. He already had clarity of progress against the plant’s goals - this is something that was discussed regularly in their Executive Leadership meetings - but walking the floor gave him even more context against those goals. A fin-tech co-founder I worked with would join project reviews. A COO created monthly business reviews - deep dives into cross-functional strategic projects. No matter how - we must be intentional, clear minded and open to the new context that might affect our work.

Besides, any farmer knows that if you can’t laugh when the goats get into the garden or the server crashes five minutes before a board meeting, you’re in the wrong business.

Many of my coaching clients are also planning. I met with the COO of a scaling tech company this week - his biggest question - how to foster more cross team collaboration? Like many tech companies they are focused on integrating AI as fast as possible. Each team is so very busy and focused on their own goals, they barely have time to look up, they needed simple ways to make collaboration easier and more self evident. He also wants to reduce the risk of cross team misses and increase shared accountability. We talked meeting structures, rhythms and the systems he could leverage.

In the garden the layout of each bed (the structure) is one of the most important enablers to healthier plants - we must be thoughtful in our approach.

We wanted to establish a business review meeting structure that would:

• not have the C level executive doing all the talking

• promote team collaboration before the meeting to review key metrics, identify blockers and acclerators, so that we could

• focus the discussion on the biggest challenges - and solve them together

We needed a rhythm that would give us enough visibility and time to course correct in the season and catch the worst risks that could affect the whole year.

The system also had to be simple - everyone is busy, we only have so many hours in a day and whenever possible we need to have maximum output with minimal effort, so we needed templates that people could understand and leverage quickly and easily.

Like the irrigation system in the farm we are thinking through the communication lines so that decision-makers have the most context and the greatest confidence and speed. What can we put in place to enable that context to ratchet up or ratchet down as needed.

The references we used to inform our thinking is:

• Gino Wickman’s entrepreneurial operating system - particularly the Integrator role, IDS and L10 meeting systems

• Patrick Lencioni’s The advantage and

• The hard thing about hard things by Horowitz, particularly the few pages on organizational design

The water tower and irrigation system in my garden achieves this magical combination - I can water the entire garden or one section with just two switches - the main at the tower and at the specific bed that needs water. Magic!

Happy planning and here’s to an amazing season ahead!

I find pruning particularly hard at times. I tell myself I’m missing an opportunity if I don’t let the plant grow, I worry I might cut too much too soon, or I think how much the plant wants this branch, its put so much energy into growing it.

In the main greenhouse when I get overwhelmed at the thought of pruning its largely because I am overcome by emotion. When I remember my mission as a gardener - have fun growing, cooking and preserving amazing food that will sustain me and my clients and community - it enables me to make the right cuts at the right time. If (or when) I fail in a specific decision (last year it was the squash), I can go back to learn more about that plant or my attitude about it, and get better at applying a decision making framework the next time.

Prioritization is a key leadership skill to ensure we will achieve our goals and serve our mission - defining a decision making framework ensures clarity of focus for you or your team - without which it devolves into an emotional or politically influenced choice.

On the farm decisions are often influenced by external factors like weather as well as natural rhythms. Countless times I recall having to immediately shift priority because a storm was coming through.

Rhythms are fairly obvious on the farm, for example it takes 54 days for radish to grow from seed. If I want Fall radish I must plant it with enough time for the seed to mature before the first frost - not doing that risks the plant maturing and being able to harvest anything successfully.

Your business may have rhythms to it as well - eg in my experience in FinTech the tax season creates more predictable patterns of customer buying cycles or if you’re producing a product you may have repeatable processes that have timelines and interdependencies eg x days to produce y outcome that require z to be done first.

And, life is always serving us the conditions that create the need to choose among competing priorities - a crisis - the water lines have a leak and have to be fixed or just the normal too much to do in not enough time. Defining our decision making framework so we are clear on what is strategic and important helps make the best choices.

A garden example

By the third planting of radish in my garden, I’ve had time to enjoy it fresh and pickle it, I can give up on planting if I have competing priorities. Its also a crop I can skip if in the height of summer (the 2nd planting) its too hot (the plants will bolt) or I want to take some time off with family and skip the planting all together. I have wiggle room to make the best choice and de prioritize or keep it high and plant. It’s good to have a few projects like radishes that give you flexibility and reduce the pressure.

A leadership example

The organization is hiring for a critical leadership role, and in the interim another member of the team has stepped into the role in addition to their regular responsibilities. It’s a lot and they are worried - the coaching topic is, I know I have to prioritize help me build a framework for the best short to mid term choices until the hire comes in

One of the farmer’s I follow on YouTube who is particularly expert at fruit trees shared a great rubric for pruning - focus on the main trunk and think of it like a chimney - you want only key limbs coming off to ensure the energy goes up.

I’m excited to get out and manage my small orchard using this approach.

How to build your decision making rubric:

The best decision making framework I’ve found is the Eisenhower 4 box

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1. Start with the context for what is a good decision - a good decision to move your mission and vision forward, if it doesn’t do that it’s not important.

2. Urgency can then be assessed based on team goals and commitments - if its a blocker to moving a project forward its urgent.

This was the view this morning at sunrise

The thing is - it looks like and was a grey wet cold day - I also know the sun was behind those clouds. I can visualize what the sun feels like and be grateful for the next time it comes and plan for the day that’s ahead.

Perspective taking is a key leadership skill as well as adjusting to surprises. Like considering the weather in our plans for the garden - a critical practice

Perspective taking is also one of my favourite coaching tools. To acknowledge the perspective you are in, one that may not be serving you eg another f-n grey day, come on!! and then take on a few other perspectives until you find one that serves you eg I know the sun is there … or … yay, a grey day means I don’t have to go anywhere and I get to stoke up the fire … or…fill in the blanks until you find a perspective that works. Works means, one that gives you the energy and motivation you need to be productive

On the farm paying attention to the weather is paramount to a successful growing season - except in the deep winter when every day we get to rest and consider productive one or two celebratory chores like preserving, cooking, building or planning the garden to come.

Thank you - for reading, following and the comments you offer. It’s you that I write for - Leaders who care about impact and people. I strive that each piece I share is helpful, enlightening and will last you the test of time. When we meaningfully connect with one another, the world is that much lighter and brighter.

In 2026 I am going to try something similar and new.

As some of you know, I straddle the natural and business worlds as a regenerative farmer, an Executive coach and former tech Executive. I want to combine these ways of leading, seeing and doing to write an ‘Old Leadership Almanac’ akin to the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Please join me as I write towards my goal that by year’s end if not sooner, I have a book I can publish that you find valuable, insightful and immediately pragmatically applicable to your lives.

So, here we go. with your feedback and support I know what I write will become even better.

Yours truly

Mic