🏢 Organisations on John PHI⑊PIN

Fri, 08 May 2026 14:13:34 +1200

🏢 Moss just wrote: 🔗 The biggest leadership oversight in modern organisations

in many organisations, the “people piece” has been relegated to the HR function.

💬 Moss Burmester

‘relegated’ - not ‘delegated’ is an interesting choice of words and highlights a more general problem - more on that in the comments.

HR systems are built around compliance, process, and record-keeping.
….
Why does engagement matter? Because performance is produced when people are deeply engaged and aligned in the business strategy

💬 Moss Burmester

Sounds to me they should be building ‘Systems of Engagement’

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:10:38 +1200

💬 👁️🏢 People First - All Else Follows.

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 07:08:26 +1200

💬🏢 To be declared a category king .. you need to be taking 70 percent - ish of all revenue and profits of said category. If nobody in a category is making a profit does that mean there is no category king❓Wondering on behalf of Sam, Dario et al.

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 06:58:14 +1200

💬🏢 That still doesn’t mean free - which is where I think people get confused. And for an extended thought ‘free’ is too often measured in not spending money. Associate your time with money and you start to realise how much free costs.

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:39:45 +1200

👁️🚧 Experiment.

👁️🏢 🔗 MALUS - Clean Room as a Service | Liberation from Open Source Attribution

A parody I believe - but just like with satire - I have this nervous feeling that parody might not be able to keep up with reality.

💬 John Philpin https://john.philpin.com/2026/04/23/malus-clean-room-as-a.html

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:19:02 +1200

👁️🏢 🔗 MALUS - Clean Room as a Service | Liberation from Open Source Attribution

A parody I believe - but just like with satire - I have this nervous feeling that parody might not be able to keep up with reality.

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:16:50 +1200

🏢 Clever image included in this LinkedIN 🔗 post.

My comment:

The only change to the image I would make is to put the rust bucket at the back … to extend your metaphor how many corporate drivers look back … they have declared their shiny new strategy and off they go .. without a clue that the organisation behind them is not what they think it is.

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:18:43 +1200

💬🏢 Don’t just ‘Think Different’. Be Different.

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:15:58 +1200

💬🎵🏢 Careful what you measure … life is a game .. life is gamed.

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:13:55 +1200

💬🏢🕋 People - Process - THEN - Technology

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:11:30 +1200

💬🏢 I often reference Brand’s ‘Pace Layers’ when attempting to reconcile ‘the speed of tech’ with the ‘speed of government’. It helps.

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:07:59 +1200

💬🏢 Written a while back and even more relevant today.

**Extension thought:**The ‘buyer’s journey’ is not the same as the ‘customer’s journey’ and both are totally different to whatever sales process that someone in your business has mapped out.

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 10:02:27 +1200

🏢 I recently posted about ’🔗 Software As A Sandwich’ which I offer as a start to an extended thought on Ton’s post 🔗 Favorited Headless Everything For Personal AI

(Yes - I do need to write more about this and where the connection is.)

Going headless means removing the viewer, and using the output of queries directly programmatically. Combined with how I see the arch of generative AI bending significantly towards deterministic code, I look forward to the type of things people come up with. Not their tools, but what they come up with. Because the path to scale of these things imo is not adopting or buying what someone else made, but adopting what someone else came up with conceptually and creating your own local version.

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:38:57 +1200

💬🏢 It’s not easy … got the t-shirt and everything … but I am sure that the other way is not right. Then again, different for the sake of different is even worse. You know what I’m talkin’ about❗️

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:35:03 +1200

💬🏢 People …Process … THEN Technology

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 09:27:29 +1200

🏢 He’s treading in ‘Chasm’ territory - so of course it all makes sense. Another future post?

🔗 The second circle

The second circle is out of your direct control, and it’s tempting to ignore it. But the second circle unlocks the change you seek to make.

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 09:25:58 +1200

🏢 I will fold this into a large piece soon - but the threads within reminded me of my thinking around ‘the gaps between the boxes’ - which I touched on in 🖇️ this newsletter but starting to think that it needs its own post.

🔗 One Consultative Decision Maker Per Lane

You (Should) Say Goodbye - I (Definitely) Say Hello

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 13:31:46 +1200

Structured Thought Meets Music Meets The Business Equation … and probably more besides.

You say yes, I say no,
You say stop, and I say go, go, go,
Oh no.
You say goodbye and I say hello, hello, hello,

💬 Paul McCartney

First song from Paul after Brian Epstein (no relation) passed on to the next stage of his life …

Wikipedia:

“It’s such a deep theme in the universe, duality – man woman, black white, ebony ivory, high low, right wrong, up down, hello goodbye – that it was a very easy song to write.” McCartney also said that, in “Hello, Goodbye”, he was promoting “the more positive side of the duality”.

Which all came to mind this morning reading 🔗 this post by Manton Reece who observed …

If everyone can ship software, what will distinguish the successful companies from the apps that are lost in the noise?

To which I reply by quoting some lines from a less talented group of songwriters - and yet seem pertinent …

Shooting stars never stop even when they reach the top

💬 Those that believe they have won.

and

The world is my oyster

💬 Everyone else.

.. or perhaps more simply - as one door closes - another opens.

Corollary - not for everyone (the corpses of software companies that litter the technology freeway is testament to that.) … so what do we do?

The shift that Manton is describing is right - but IMHO falls short of what a business needs in The Age of Engagement which is pretty much what I have been writing about for a while now ….

Two Foundational Posts

🔗 The Age of Reason Is Over

🔗 The Age of Experience is Emerging

Just this past week

🔗 Coherence Is The New Moat

🔗 Engagement Platforms as Coherence Infrastructure

Bonus Post

🔗 Marketing in 2025 (and 2026 it turns out)

From a marketing perspective - the 4Ps have been part of the lexicon of any marketeer on this planet since before I was born. But now …

say goodbye

… to the 4Ps: Price, Place, Product and Promotion

say hello

… to The 4Es : Exchange, Ease, Essence and Experience

Price gives way to Exchange
Not what you charge. What you trade. Mutual value.

Place gives way to Ease
Not where you are. How frictionless you make it. If engagement hurts, product dies.

Product gives way to Essence
Not what you make. Who you are - through your customer’s eyes. Stop second guessing.

Promotion gives way to Experience
Not what you say. What they feel. Their perception is your only reality.

OR

You say ‘goodbye’ to ‘~~Product Efficient Supply Chains~~’ while I say ‘hello’ to ‘Customer Effective Demand Networks’

(Those are two thought threads of mine that go back to the early oughts and are integral to The Business Equation.)

When everyone can ship code (I know, I know), technical execution becomes table stakes - but I think although Manton’s words are different to my words he is recognising the shift that I keep describing … constraint has moved from PRODUCT to EXPERIENCE.

So - back to Manton’s list;

Marketing shapes perception
Customer support reduces friction
Documentation enables ease (even ‘easier’ intuitive UI)
Building trust demonstrates essence
Speed removes barriers to engagement

These aren’t the ‘other aspects’ of running a software business. They are now the primary aspects. Code is just infrastructure. In fact just last week, my friend and partner for the development of the apps we are building said just last week.

The cost of code might be coming down - but people don’t buy code - they buy software.

Actually - being who I am I think they are buying what the software will do for them - but that’s my marketing lens. What Tony was hitting on is right from th pot of what marketeers used to call ‘Full Product’.

The 4Ps assumed scarcity of products, distribution and information, whilst the 4Es assumed abundance where engagement is the only moat.

Manton’s list is actually part of The 4Es.

Essence: Building trust (who we actually are)
Ease: Documentation + Speed (frictionless access)
Exchange: Customer support (mutual value delivery)
Experience: Marketing (perception management)

The Age of Engagement isn’t coming. It’s here. Code is just catching up.

and clearly - Jimi was way ahead of his time! (But we knew that already. Right?)

If you want to set some time to explore how all this can be used to help your business transition into the ‘Age of Experience’. 📅 Let’s Talk

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 17:21:11 +1200

🔗 Engagement Platforms as Coherence Infrastructure

A slight restructure of this post - and so a reissue.

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 17:20:07 +1200

🔗 Coherence Is the New Moat

Another post restructure - and reissue.

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 11:37:08 +1200

Thanks to AI, the cost of code has definitely reduced recently. By a lot.

But people don’t buy code. They buy solutions. Code is never the solution.

Back On To Content Again.

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:19:55 +1200

Chris Lockhead posted 🔗 this on LinkedIN

It’s LinkedIn oatmeal.

Chris is right, so I replied:

Content is homogenous, undifferentiated and fully interchangeable with any other content - like any other ‘grain’ that sits in a silo.

Can you really tell one grain of wheat from another?
Is your post/comment really interchangeable with every one else’s?

If so - content it is. If not - guess what - it is not content. So don’t call it content.

Content is a horrible, generic, cheap, ‘anything will do’ kind of word and so - like a grain of wheat - any individual piece of ‘content’ has no value. The value is in the total silo.

It is also important to know that it is in the best interests of the ‘buyers’ (I use the term loosely) of our sweat, labour, thought and time to create our IP - to keep their costs down. So, content is what THEY will continue to call it. Don’t fall into that trap.

Our costs are not kept down. Our net earnings do suffer. They are suffering badly.

Oh - and a quick reminder - been saying this for years. As have others - like 🖇️ Will Arnett talking to Dana Gould

C3 Ain't What It Used To Be - More Rebrands than Facebook Meta.

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 16:08:42 +1200

C3.AI, founded by tech industry veteran Thomas Siebel, is in talks to merge with privately held startup Automation Anywhere being reported by The Information.

Which got me to thinking - C3 is a dot ‘ai’? When did that happen?

Heh Claude (because for this I really do not have the time or inclination) …

“What was C3 before c3.ai - when did it change - wasn’t it energy or something?”

🤖 Claude

You’re absolutely right! C3.ai has gone through quite the identity evolution:

2009 - Started as C3, where “C” stood for “carbon” and “3” represented “measure, mitigate, and monetize.” The original mission was helping companies manage their carbon footprints.

2012 - Rebranded to C3 Energy after founder Tom Siebel (who previously sold Siebel Systems to Oracle for $5.85 billion) saw opportunity in grid operators and utilities. The company focused on smart grid analytics, using big data and machine learning to analyze sensor data from power grids.

2016 - Renamed to C3 IoT, signaling expansion beyond just energy into broader Internet of Things markets across manufacturing, aerospace, financial services, and other industries.

2019-2020 - Became C3.ai to align with the hot AI investment trend (went public in December 2020).

Me

So essentially: carbon/energy → energy utilities → general IoT → enterprise AI. The company clearly adapted as market opportunities shifted and new technology trends emerged. Some skeptics have pointed out that the frequent rebranding feels more like chasing whatever’s trendy in the market rather than genuine business evolution, especially given how each rename coincided with emerging tech hype cycles (IoT around 2016, AI around 2019).

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 10:29:12 +1200

Thought For Today - read it carefully.

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 07:47:47 +1200

💬 content = slop. END OF.

But if you present me an essay, book, article, video, pithy comment, observation, slice of humour .. that broadens my mind, my thinking or entertains me .. I’m all over it.

Cannot wait for the filters to arrive. To allow me to train my AI to throw content into the trash.

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 23:00:32 +1200

💬 Content - the miracle worker …

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 13:48:21 +1200

Stop Calling It Content

🔗 The Thought

Content is a non differentiated, horrible, generic, cheap, replaceable kind of word.

Content is stored in silos - with grains and other commodities.

Content has minimal value.

Get The Full List of The Articles 🖇️🔎 Hand Crafted With Love

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 08:48:48 +1200

🔗🔎 You know how I hate that word ‘content’ .. it’s getting worse.

Systems of Truth? Reality or Pipedream?

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 08:14:21 +1200

When I read Scott Brinker (ChiefMartec) I generally feel that our thinking is aligned, but his images often seem to be designed to create fear and creating a speech bubble above my head that reads something like “my god - how the hell can I keep up”. They don’t, IMHO give clarity. Well, maybe back in 2011 .. maybe - but I recall back then it still seem overwhelming ..

By the time I got to 2024 - I was seriously asking myself what is the point? (Although it didn’t stop me reading his posts.)

So I initially found his post from today a breath of fresh air, imagine … ‘Meet the new martech stack: systems of context and systems of truth’

And in it I found a reasonable framework;

Which I liked - because it aligns with my ‘Business Equation’ thinking.

.. but then I read the piece and even Scott calls out my initial thought…

Now, squinting at my diagram you might ask, “Isn’t this just systems of engagement and systems of record with different labels?

💬 Scott Brinker

But that isn’t where I am going, because ‘words’ are important.

Systems of Truth

Truth? Who’s Truth?

I am a customer of Citibank. Their system of record will tell you that my home address is up in Marin, North California. I live in SoCal - and never bothered changing it - the bank is minor to my requirements - and everything I do is online - why waste my time.

My mobile provider is different again.

The data farms/lakes/mountains (using such nice natural sounding words to describe tools of the surveillance economy aside) hosted by the large corporates can never show absolute truth about me - they will only ever have a filter/slice/view of who I am .. which is partly what I choose to share - which will vary from person to person and their context at the time.

These are not systems of truth, they are the systems of record of the corporation that houses that particular set of data. To be fair - Scott does make that distinction in his piece (my bold).

they remain the arbiters of truth for data within their domain

💬 Scott Brinker

and then goes on …

We never achieved a true single system of truth (SSOT). Turns out there are just too many domain-specific data truths. But with a universal data layer on bottom and domain-specific data governance platforms on top, we now have many systems – plural – of truth.

💬 Scott Brinker

So why change it? Again - referencing my example at the opening of this section - Citi do not have the truth about my residence. No matter how hard they try - they have a System of Record - so why muddy the waters and call it Truth (other than climbing an board with attempting to use a ‘word of the moment’.)

Systems of Context

I would argue that systems of engagement by definition includes that of context. In face to me - that is the whole point.

Scott clarifies;

Instead of a monologue, where a brand serves a contextual experience based on its own definition of the buyer’s journey and what it thinks the buyer wants, concierge AI agents will engage buyers in a true dialogue to understand and serve their actual context.

💬 Scott Brinker

and then

A little farther out on the horizon – but maybe not that far – buyers will use their own AI agents to interact with our systems of context. These aren’t customer-facing AI agents that sellers control. These are customer-owned AI agents that they control. They will inherently shape the experience to the context of the buyer.

💬 Scott Brinker

Aaah yes - that promised nirvana - putting the customer in control (or at least their agents - but who owns the agents?) … remember we live in a world where if we buy a digital book - you don’t actually own it - why are agents going to be different.

If it is - I will be first in line for that service - but breath not held. And this is why.

Closed Systems

It will have been around 20 years ago that Joyce Searls asked if a corporation has a ‘CRM’ that allows them to ‘manage their relationship with their customer’ - why don’t we (people) have a ‘VRM’ to ‘manage our relationship with our vendors? Put simply, if I change my cell number, I need to let the change be known to each of the vendors I use … electic, gas, utilities, bank, uber, amazon …. you get the picture. A VRM would allow you to make one update - and your vendors systems of record would be updated accordingly.

Twenty years later, we still don’t have that.

But John - I hear you cry - AI is going to change all that - to which I say excellent - when?

… and back to those personal AI agents. How? Yes there will be a small cadre of people who will download agentic models and live in that rarefied world of ‘sovereignty’ - but given that most people don’t know - or think to act on even managing their phone notifications - I don’t see them downloading their personal agentic models just yet. And even if we do - the corporations have to allow us to do that - first and then allow that model to interact with their systems. They aren’t really very good at that when you think about it.

For all of this - I am pretty sure that Scott doesn’t come from my POV - but rather that of the corporation, which I think explains our different take. It’s clear just by looking at this image form his article …

He puts those systems of truth right slap bang the middle.

I would have the exact same image - with me - the individual in the center - with my system of TRUTH - and context filter around that to expose the slices of truth I want a corporation to see and use in their own systems of engagement.

And that can be built by starting here.

Stopping here for now - but this is a bit topic -and I think needs more to be said.

A Reminder About ‘Content’

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 09:04:25 +1200

… because it’s getting worse.

A strategic thinker wouldn’t call it content.

Sorry - no idea who wrote that - not me - but definitely on pace with my thinking - which you will know that 🖇️🔍 I have written about this many times over the years.

To save the click through - in a nutshell …

As long as ‘we the creators’ fall into the trap of using low cost, homogenous, non-descript words like ‘content’ to describe our work, our soul, our passion, our beliefs then our work will continue to be viewed as ‘free - to - cheap - to - low - cost’, as ‘homogenized, non differentiated, interchangeable fodder’. Moreover, we then only have ourselves to blame and the resultant payment for your art, your thinking, your ideas, will continue to race to the bottom.

💬 John Philpin

And

It is not in the interests of any creator to allow that, so why allow their interests to define how we think?

💬 John Philpin

And

Content is a horrible, generic, cheap, ‘anything will do’ kind of word. Which is why ‘content’ has no value. It is also important to know that it is in the best interests of the buyers of our sweat, labour, thought and time to keep their price down. But our costs are not kept down. So our net earnings suffer. And they are suffering badly. And it has to start with you - the creator, because it isn’t in the interests of buyers to change their behaviour and vocabulary - ‘they’ want great work at no cost.

💬 John Philpin

So. What you going to do about it?

🔗🔎 BusinessBytes | 🔗🔎 Content

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 10:46:25 +1200

🔗 Om on content, it’s as if I wrote it - not with the natural flow of Om - but definitely 🖇️🔎 the subject matter.

🎈033/366 | 🥇 And The Winner Is …

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 07:10:57 +1200

« 032/366 | 034/366 »

’And The Winner Is' By 'Leonardo'

This 366 project is officially one month in, so I thought I’d take a look at how we are doing on the ‘view’ front .. I won’t use ‘read’ (no assumptions here 😀).. so, without further ado, and for your delectation, coming in at Number 5 …

5 : 🖇️ 013/366 ⌨️ Typewriters .. and more.

And so on down the line …

4 : 🖇️ 026/366 | 🆔 The ‘entity’ in Identity.

3 : 🖇️ 004/366 | 🏢 Demonstrating The Pace Layer).

2 : 🖇️ 003/366 | 💬 A New Purpose.

And the winner - at least for this month, coming in at number …

1 : 🖇️ 002/366 | ♟️ Is There Planning In Strategy❓

Thoughts

Numbers 1, 2 and 3 are respectively the 2nd, 3rd and 4th posts in the series, so not surprised.

I am surprised at the 26th post coming as high as 4th, after all, It only had 5 days to get there.

By the time you get down to Number 5 - well, it’s a topic that resonates, and had a full half month to ‘move on up’, so once again, no real surprise.

I will run the numbers again next month, for February - and again for January - and will also provide a ‘year to date’. Be interesting to see the comparisons. (BTW, I am specifically running the data between specific dates - in this case for example Jan 1 to Jan 31 - not just ‘last month’.)

I am also interested to see if this posts gives a jump on these particular posts, so I will check the data in 7 days.

That’s all for now - except to say, my many thanks to 🔗 Vincent who wrote and maintains the 🔗 tinylytics app that in turn produces the data I need to write this email. Couldn’t do without it.

At the beginning of the year I had grand plans for this series. A daily long-form post about something that was rattling my brain that day. And then life. For a while, I was even just dropping markers - to revisit. I came to realise that part of the problem was the complexity of the structure for each post - so that went away. Simplicity really is rather nice. As I write on 240413, I am now going back and filling in the gaps. PLUS - unless something strikes me immediately, I will not classify until the end of the day and go back to move one of the posts of the day into the 366. Also - if you are wondering how I have update the words at the bottom of over 100 posts at a stroke, well - THANK YOU Andy Sylvester and his Glossary plugin.

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🎈004/366 | 🏢 Demonstrating The Pace Layer

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 21:07:18 +1200

« 003/366 | 005/366 »

Over the break, I had the fortune (not committing to whether that’s good or bad, since that is a whole different story) to visit Martinborough in the Wairarapa - one of New Zealand’s wine regions. It’s a cute little town that includes a single ‘supermarket’.

On one visit I noticed two photographs on the wall - the building from the early part of the last century, photographed in 1906 ….

… and a second of a different building (same site) in 1949.

As I took the photographs of the photographs, I commented to a couple passing by and watching me that it was a shame that a beautiful building such as the original was replaced by the ‘flat pack’.

I assumed that some bright spark had decided to pull the old one down in favor of the ‘modern, sleek lined building’.

Never assume.

Yes the old one was pulled down - but after a major earthquake rendered part of it flat and part of it unsafe - and I get why you would want to modernize and I know why the designs changed - but that’s not what this is about.

What it’s about is that the photographs and conversation reminded me of a 🔗 recent post from Stowe Boyd that referenced Stewart Brand’s book 🔗 How Buildings Learn which in turn built on the ideas of British architect Frank Duffy.

Buildings aren’t made out of glass, concrete and stone: they’re made out of time, layers of time.

💬 Frank Duffy

Brand’s model is clear;

… and the two images reveal it in action. No images from the inside of the store - though for the Kiwi’s amongst you, I can say that the Martinborough FourSquare is the nicest (and largest) FourSquare I have ever visited. (For Brits, think of a FourSquare as something like one of those Tesco or Safeways Mini-marts we find in ever increasing numbers around the British Isles. Think of the Martinborough Foursquare as more akin to a mid sized Waitrose. For American readers … Wholefoods? High end Safeways?

All that said - look at Brand’s model carefully and consider buildings you know and how they relate.

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Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Silos To Publish Their Thinking.

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 02:54:45 +1200

🖇️ I wrote a related piece yesterday.

This one takes the thought a step further, because it’s not just original posts … but also replies.

As so often happens to me these days .. I start to reply to a message somewhere in one of the interweb’s silos … you know where they are in control - not you … even down to how long your message should be … because … you know ‘they’ know best. When that happens, I start a new post on said silo .. where there isn’t a character limit .. but I find myself doing that less and less … because why do I want to give my original thinking to a silo that stores undifferentiated commodities like bulk chaff? That’s why I don’t write ‘content’ …

But these days there’s even more reason not to use the Silos for being the prime origin of your IP, your work, your thinking.

🖇️ The short ‘case study’ just yesterday is all about the problem.

My next post started as a reply to a very good LinkedIN post .. and is a prime example of the ‘too long’ problem. I’ll link to here when it is finished.

🏢 Organisations on John PHI⑊PIN

You (Should) Say Goodbye - I (Definitely) Say Hello

OR

Back On To Content Again.

C3 Ain't What It Used To Be - More Rebrands than ~~Facebook~~ Meta.

🤖 Claude

Me

Stop Calling It Content

Systems of Truth? Reality or Pipedream?

Systems of Truth

Systems of Context

Closed Systems

A Reminder About ‘Content’

🎈033/366 | 🥇 And The Winner Is …

Thoughts

🎈004/366 | 🏢 Demonstrating The Pace Layer

Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Silos To Publish Their Thinking.

C3 Ain't What It Used To Be - More Rebrands than Facebook Meta.