№01
Stop firefighting. Start deciding.
Firefighting is not a tempo problem. It is a constraint problem. When the binding issue stays unnamed, every symptom becomes urgent and nothing becomes resolved.
Read the noteFIELD NOTES
Fourteen notes from the field.
Short, specific writing on the decisions that shape programme performance. Just the thing that matters, and why.
№02
High performance without burning the team.
The leaders who compound performance over time are not the ones who push hardest. They are the ones who find the constraint and remove it — so the team runs faster on less effort.
Read the note№03
How leaders think clearly under pressure.
Pressure does not reduce thinking capacity. It narrows it. The question is not how to stay calm — it is how to stay pointed at the right problem when everything is competing for attention.
Read the note№04
Rebuilding trust after a difficult programme.
Trust in a delivery team is not a feeling. It is a record: of decisions made, of commitments kept, of problems named and resolved. Rebuild the record and the trust follows.
Read the note№05
Accountability without micromanaging.
The leader who checks everything creates a team that waits to be checked. Accountability lives in the system, not in the leader's attention. Build the system.
Read the note№06
The constraint nobody names.
In every programme there is a constraint that everyone feels and nobody says aloud. It might be a relationship, a decision pending at the top, or a scope assumption that has never been tested. Naming it is the move.
Read the note№07
Six days.
When a problem has to cross a boundary to get decided, it waits about six days. Six days does not sound like a crisis. That is why nobody manages it, and why it costs so much.
Read the note№08
A programme is a chain of decisions.
The schedule shows tasks completed. It does not show decisions waiting. That is why a programme can report green for weeks and arrive at commissioning late.
Read the note№09
The meeting that never decides.
Walk out of your next programme review and ask one question. What decision was made in the last hour? On most programmes the honest answer is none.
Read the note№10
Stuck one level too high.
On the struggling programmes where we have counted, more than half the stuck decisions are not stuck because they are hard. They are stuck because they are sitting with the wrong person.
Read the note№11
The number was green and the line was standing still.
Every target you set will be hit. The question is what gets broken on the way to hitting it, and whether you are watching that too.
Read the note№12
A good decision can still lose.
You can make the right call and get a bad result. You can make a reckless one and get lucky. If you judge decisions by how they turned out, your programme learns the wrong lessons and calls it experience.
Read the note№13
Checking afterwards is not checking.
The records were complete. The product did not match what the customer had ordered. When a sign-off happens hours after the work, you have accounting, not verification.
Read the note№14
Why twenty years can teach you nothing.
We assume a leader with twenty years behind them decides better than one with five. The evidence does not support it. Time served is not the same as getting better.
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