This time last week (checks calendar), actually yesterday, ‘Collective Wisdom’ said that ‘Consulting is Dead’.
But life moves fast. Today is a new day.
OOHH OOHH - I know let’s set up a consulting division.
No - let’s partner with a consulting company.
No - even better - let’s acquire a consulting company.
💬 Anthropic and OpenAI
🔗 OpenAI launches OpenAI Deployment Company, acquires Tomoro
Tom Siebel’s playbook from the 90s is alive and well - so much for ‘Collective Wisdom’ - which also has the habit of crowing about how everything is new - the old world no longer applies.
Right then.
The thing about 90% of TDMs [Technical Decision Makers] is that they’re motivated primarily by NOT GETTING FIRED. These aren’t people who browser Lobsters or push to GH on the weekend. These are people that work 9 to 5, get paid, go home, and NEVER THINK ABOUT WORK AGAIN. So to achieve all that, they follow secular trends supported by analysts and broad public sentiment. Oh, Gartner said that “AI strategy” is most important? McKinsey said “context” needs to be managed? Well, “Context Engine for AI Apps” is going to be defensible. Buy it.
💬 Mitchell Hashimoto
Nathan makes an important point. 🔗 Why this is not a newsletter.
Commentators with a large and loyal audience quit their jobs at a newsroom—which hires support staff, investigative reporters, and others who have no such followings—and bring a decent chunk of their economic value with them. The newsletter service and payment platforms get a cut. Money moves from institutional support to influencer economies. The commentators get some newfound freedom. But if we don’t have robust journalistic institutions doing news-gathering work, what is there to comment on?
💬 Nathan Schneider
🔗 Apple is missing the thing that once made it great.
Apple devices also often used to come in real colors. Sure, every now and again Apple will allow a blue or a red or an orange to land on an iPhone as if by clerical mistake.
💬 The Macalope
Fully aware that;
- 3 of my 6 sites are very broken.
- 1 is a little broken
- 2 are not broken at all.
Coincidentally;
- 3 of my 6 sites allow me to modify things - a lot.
- 1 a little bit.
- 2 not at all.
Off to read up on correlation and causation.
👁️ Spotted on LinkedIN.
Wouldn’t ‘Battery As A Service’ be called ‘Electricity’ outside of the Bay Area?
We just don’t build them like this any more.
🔗 Markus Brunetti’s Monumental Photos Venerate European Ecclesiastical Landmarks
🤯 .. A ballpoint pen❓
🔗 Habib Hajallie’s Meticulous Ballpoint Pen Drawings Examine the Depths of Emotion.
I used to get told off for doodling in text books when I was a kid. This guy’s drawing pictures on Ancient Texts. #Wonderful
🔗 Ranked: The Animals That Kill the Most Humans
Turns out that visiting Australia (arguably host of some of the most dangerous critters in the world) is safer than just being a human.
👁️ Thinking that we need a different collective noun. From here on in they will known as Feral Agencies.
Crucial Track 🎵 May 13, 2026
"Perfect Day" by Lou Reed
Whenever it doesn’t seem right … Lou sets me straight.
🖋️ Forgive or not to forgive. That is the question.
Rabbiting on about ‘forgiveness’. When is it time? Should we?
🖋️ If POTUS Says It - Why Can't We Report It?
Don’t click through if you are easily offended. Then again - if you are easily offended stop listening to POTUS
Which Way Forward
BUT
If you don’t know where you are going,
any road will do.
Part two of a two part article. If you want to know what part one was all about, well - that’s why we have hyperlinks.
The World Is Sensing It.
Over the past few days, a series of articles filtered to the top of my feeds, all talking about different aspects of this same structural gap that in turn coalesced around 4 questions.
1] Why do our most important assets - people, if you believe the organisational mantras - get relegated to HR?
❓ Have we hidden engagement inside a compliance system?
2] Does every organisation run on two charts - one visible, one invisible? We already know one is broken.
❓ Is the real work happening in the one nobody’s designing for?
3] What happens when you build community momentum as the primary growth engine, not the side effect?
❓ By launching another platform? OR by providing underserved networks the infrastructure they need to engage and better serve their communities.
4] What if your website isn't the problem and it's really just a symptom?
❓ Are you hiding broken strategy inside broken web infrastructure?
The Realisation
‘Systems of Record’ don’t produce engagement. They produce overhead.
Sensing Isn’t Solving.
Organisations see the gap. They meet. They talk about it. They all agree - and then they go back to their day job and wonder why it feels like pushing water uphill. The problems seem ‘wicked’ in nature.
They understand that relegating people to HR compliance systems doesn’t produce performance. They’re watching CRM vendors struggle. They know their ‘Systems of Record’ can’t be used in this new world. They are ready for ‘Systems of Engagement’.
But being ready isn’t the same as being able. The path from ‘we need this’ to ‘here’s how we do it’ needs different thinking to what got them there1.
The Business Equation Is Fundamental.
It isn't a framed manifesto for the lobby; it's the heartbeat of the business and the operating principle through which every decision filters. We aren’t just ‘thinking’ about People, Process, and Technology - we’re operationalising them in the only order that actually scales.
‘Systems of Record’ have historically often got this backwards - despite knowing better - optimising for the technology and data capture first. And then we wonder why they fail to engage. ‘Systems of Engagement’ turns it on its head: design for people, build the process around them and let the technology serve both.
Take websites. You need one, you have one.
Question - is it a cost or an investment?
I would venture that if it is built around who we are and what we want to say - in short a static digital bill board - it will be (rightly) seen as a cost. What if it was built around your business as a business growth asset? That’s how we flip it.2
We stop building systems that record people.
We start building systems that engage them.
One saves up to 100%. The other grows from 100% to - well, you tell me.
Who’s In. Who’s Watching. Who’s Building.
Over the years, many organisations have committed to this thinking - all over the world. You’d be surprised what has been done and who has put real money behind this thinking and approach.
Because here’s the thing: yes, the ‘Business Equation’ not only shows why ‘Systems of Engagement’ matter but also identifies which engagement systems?
And then - how to move from here to there?
The problem has been solved. The solutions are still assembling.
Solutions that
make invisible flows visible.
turn compliance machinery into engagement infrastructure.
let people actually see and act on what matters.
not with new tech - but better thinking.
not by replacing what you have - but building value around it.
not locking you in - but growing with you.
The conversations are happening. The commitments are real. The solutions are assembling. The question isn’t whether to pivot. It’s how fast you move.
If you’re sensing this. If you’re asking these questions. If you want to be part of building rather than watching - well ….
Many thanks for your attention. I look forward to talking.
We are building an assessment to help you get clarity, if you would like early access, drop me a line.
We remodel business data structures and extend into what a business needs to grow. We don’t rebuild the site, we extend it with features that the audience needs and at a stroke the site moves from a cost that nobody cares about and ignored because it is an overhead to a space that creates momentum by attracting visitors and engaging them.
The Rear View Mirror
The same can be said for Systems of Record.
This is the first of a two part issue. If you already know our history and are more interested in where we are going - then the next newsletter is for you.
‘They’ have their CRM. Where’s my VRM?1
Before you get too excited - sorry this is not about that - but - the question has been my North Star for a couple of decades. It’s the itch that ‘Systems of Record’ couldn’t scratch, and the reason I spent my career working as a translator in rooms where the wrong problems were being solved with clinical precision.
The Translator in the Room.
My job was simple ..
Translate.
For technologists - competing to build smarter mousetraps and needing to explain themselves to ‘the market’.
For people - realising that the real problem isn't catching mice, it's that nobody's talking about why the mice are there in the first place.
I lived in that gap. I learned to speak both languages and discovered that software companies are brilliant at “solving the wrong problem really well”.2
It was a sign of the times - but they optimised for efficiency. For capture. For storage. For control. Systems of Record, designed to document what happened yesterday so they could save money today. And they locked you in. Built moats around the data. Made you dependent. That’s where the money was - still is for some. And at the time that was the right thing to do.
But to remix a couple of metaphors - if all you have is a hammer, by the time you get to where the puck is going, the problem might not be a nail anymore.
Tomorrow's problems can’t be solved with yesterday's tools.
I also learned that you can only save up to 100% of what you have BUT on the flip side - The Business Equation makes clear that there are no such limits to growth.
These learnings contributed to the foundation of ‘John2.0’ - People First. Process Second. Technology Third. And by ‘people’ I mean all people - customers, staff, vendors, partners, members … and knowing what each person needs to ‘improve their lot’ - not what the system wants to capture and a series of ‘truths’ informed how to build these new systems.
When I left People First ‘behind’ to start PHI⑊PIN3, it was only the name that changed. The foundation, the thinking, the frameworks all remained and are in constant use and now we build solutions on those principles. Not with a new tech stack. No reinvention of the wheel. Definitely not throwing away what works and absolutely building value through a three step process.
Think carefully.
Build what’s needed now.
Stay agile for the future.
Websites appear as outcomes not as the project. Solutions emerge from solving real problems, not from feature roadmaps. We move fast, faster than most. But every piece serves a purpose. Nothing exists for its own sake.
And here’s the thing:
We make money when our customers grow, not when they’re stuck.
The sunset in the rear view is clear. Yesterday is over and tomorrow is a new day.
Will it be exactly the same as yesterday? No. So why are you doing the same thing?
Each of us has one history - and many possible futures.
Which future is all to do with the choices you make today.
Want to talk more?
Joyce Searls (yes - that Joyce) posed this question years ago in the early days of Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) thinking. It remains the most elegant articulation of the asymmetry we’re working to address.
Credit to John Caswell for this formulation. It captures something I’ve observed across two decades of watching software companies excel at doing just that.
I should write a newsletter one day explaining ‘why’ PHI⑊PIN.
🏢 Interesting to read this today, because I have been writing similar things myself - albeit from a different angle. The words will be published soon and I will return and link later.
Your website is no longer just a destination. It’s a source. It’s the canonical, structured, well-maintained origin point from which your message gets picked up, interpreted, summarized, and carried elsewhere. The better that source material is, the better it travels.
Think of it this way: Your website used to be the store. Now, it’s also the warehouse. And the warehouse needs to be organized well enough that anyone (human or machine) can find what they need, understand what it means, and carry it somewhere else without losing the plot.
💬 Tim Chambers
🔗 Websites As Canonical Sources, Not Just Destinations.
The problem of course is that to be both a warehouse and a store is a very tall order - not impossible, but certainly not easy - because you need clarity on what you’re doing and why.
The website exposes whether you have it - and if you don’t - I’ll bet a pound to a penny that your web site designer/developer won’t.
That’s why we start at the opposite end - where websites are outcomes of clear thought, strategy and data architecture.
🔗 The shared tragedy of Red Queen hiring | Seth’s Blog
Successful fishermen understand that casting an ever-wider net is not always the best way to catch the fish you need.
Hiring is Hard - like everything else. F-O-C-U-S
🔗📚 ‘Small is Beautiful’ - and a big win IMHO.
this takes a turn at the end.
💬 Mitch Wagner
Certainly does - because it fits so nicely into the emerging narrative about ‘craft’ and ‘artisans’ - and of course the Japanese would be where it would all start.