Friday Field Notes. Monday Momentum. Partnership Principles. Ideas.
Four things I'm building, all in one place — for now. Think of this as the workbench where the tools are still being sharpened. Dedicated spaces are coming. You're seeing the early cuts.
A dense week spanning Venice, Valtellina, Scandinavia, and UK. Many parallel initiatives, but real value lies in invisible preparation. Like climbing, what you see is not the grade. This week is the moment to make governance products visible and move agreements toward operational reality.
Monday Momentum – Week 11 of 12 – Q1 2026 Four choices this week. Not tasks — choices. They come from a single observation that surfaced at the crag on Saturday: when you love what you’re doing, rational analysis isn’t enough to make the hard calls. You need a tool and an attitude. The tool … Read More
The kit is lighter. The terrain is real. And after a weekend adapting to different rhythms, limits and needs — on the slopes, in conversation with new friends — the lesson lands again: a framework only becomes real when tested with another person. The compromise isn’t the cost. It’s the method. Everyone gets better.
I’ve been in rooms like this. A contract on the table. Pressure from above. A line somewhere that, if crossed, changes what you are.
I didn’t always hold it. Sometimes I moved with the room — told myself it was pragmatism, told myself the relationship was too important to lose.
The ethical line isn’t abstract. It’s heavy. And it teaches you something the easy choices never do: how to recognise the moment earlier next time. How to see the line before you’re standing on it.
That’s the only descent worth choosing.
Not the whiteboard. Not the slide deck. Not the notebook where the ideas have been living for months. The moment it works out on the hill with someone else — that’s the only test worth trusting.
One tiny adjustment — a slight turn of the knee — and you’re not falling, you’re sending the line. Not breaking, but completing the turn perfectly.
That’s the NED role. Not taking over the descent. Being alongside someone at the right moment, with the one thing that changes everything.
Weight is no good in the mountains. You don’t go far and you don’t climb hard carrying too much.
This week I cut — commitments, projects, maybes. The skill isn’t accumulating. It’s editing. Pochi ma buoni. Few but good. In partnerships, in projects, in where I put my time.
The valley of despair is real. The only way out is through.
I don’t map routes this time — I map ideas. With attention, not certainty.
After injury, after failure, the question is never whether you can climb again. It’s whether you still want to. I still want to.
The effort I put into organising outdoor adventures — the route research, the conditions checking, the preparation — I’m now applying to business. Not as metaphor. As method.
Monday Momentum | 09 February 2026 Two weeks. Back at it. I’ve been quiet on the Monday Momentum front while the work continued underneath. Now it’s time to surface, declare publicly, and push through. What’s shifting Smart Mountains restart. The seeding round opens in summer 2026 — delayed from the original March timeline while my … Read More
Monday Momentum | 12 January 2026 The Christmas marathon is over. Weeks of shuttling between Valtellina and Belluno, of friends squeezed between appointments rather than savoured over long meals, of ski touring plans undone by absent snow. We’re back in Winchester now, tired in a way that feels earned but not quite right. Here’s what … Read More
Still building. Still writing. Still climbing.
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