295: Lebo Diseko’s The House at 6001
Dear Friends Last week I said we would visit Lebo Diseko’s memoir The House at 6001, and that is where soul and self will go. /strategy Two weeks ago, I wrote to you about loss. I am grateful for…
Category Personal Development
293: Remembrance via Langston Hughes
Dear friends Today is quieter. The other day, I remembered your wide smile and short dreads, the dreads that disappeared with age and title. Then, I remembered you are no longer here. A friend from my first job, fresh out of…
285: Hope and Freedom
Dear friends Yesterday, 21 March, was South Africa’s Human Rights Day. It commemorates the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960, when armed apartheid police opened fire on an unarmed group of protestors. 1,300+ rounds were fired in less than a minute, killing at…
273: Lego Friends. Sarah Jessica Parker. Richard Powers.
Good morning dear friends In today’s letter: If you enjoy this week’s letter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can subscribe [here]. /strategyIn his truly excellent A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Management Effectiveness, Roger Martin…
264: Helen Lewis. Adam Grant. The Genius of Relentless Execution.
Good morning friends /strategy Helen Lewis is the author of The Genius Myth. She argues that we should speak not of geniuses, but of moments of genius. This formulation, she says, recognises that those acclaimed as geniuses operate in systems…
251: Stephen King and Strategy. Choose what you worship. Celebrating Africa.
Good morning friends /strategyStephen King provides this week’s strategy. Yep, that Stephen King. Monster-under-the bed-guy. The link is, perhaps, a little oblique, but I suspect the occasional unconvention is part of why you’re here. He introduces each short story in The…
248: Oreos. Meera Sodha and Getting Started. RF Kuang and Making History.
Good morning dear friends I hope you’re well. It is book prize season. This week, the 2025 Orwell Prize for political writing announced their finalists. You can find them here. If this is the first time you’ve read Strategy, Soul…
#243: Lessons from Love and Fury
“That’s what maps mysteriously do: They obliterate information to provide some information at all”.Zia Haider Rahman – In the Light of What We Know Good morning good people Our last few letters have tilted towards the strategy side of this…
#233: Listen to the signals
Good morning good people As always, thank you for being here. You can read past editions of the newsletter here and find our favourite quotations here. Time Out Magazine released their Best Cities of 2025 ranking two weeks ago. It was…
#232: Building Your 2025 Reading List: Books to Inspire
Good morning dear friends We are back! Five years ago, to the day, I sent this newsletter to a handful of friends for comment. Since then, I’ve written 232 of them. All of you have kindly joined the ride, sending…
#228: How to be buoyant
Good morning good people Yesterday, after months of rain (for which we are grateful) and weeks of wind, summer arrived on the Cape Peninsula. Gaudy neon ribbons of runners and cyclists wove their way around the coastal road. Happy swimmers…
#227: How to Listen Better
Dear Friends First, an announcement. From Thursday, my parents are visiting what is a currently a windy Southern Peninsula (the whales seem to be hiding out or have left) and so I am taking a break from writing to spend time…