The weekly letter

Strategy, Soul & Self

My coaching practice taught me this: we cannot create what we cannot imagine.

We do not need to be able to describe the future in all its detail, but we do need inspiration that sparks our imagination, inspiration that enables us to envisage what the next step might be; then we can start building with confidence.

Strategy, Soul & Self provides a weekly dose of provocation, inspiration, and imagination from the world’s best thinkers.

“In a world where there are a lot of buzzwords and more of the same, I find Karl to be different, swimming upstream and helping me become a better critical thinker.”

What it is about

It is named after the pillars of my coaching practice.

  • Strategy

    I work with leaders in complex environments.

  • Self

    We can only have impact if we ourselves are masterful.

  • Soul

    For strategy and self to be transformative, they must be imbued with meaning.

It is a letter about leadership and life, rooted in an ongoing commitment to my clients: to match their needs with the best thinking I can find. If you value intellectual eclecticism, because you know and appreciate that having multiple perspectives yields multiple possibilities and that ideas are powerful in themselves and become most powerful when enacted, then you’ll enjoy Strategy, Soul & Self. Each edition leaves you with ideas about what you can achieve, examples of how its been done and the inspiration to do so yourself.

Strategy, Soul & Self is also an important part of my coaching infrastructure. It my clients quick, curated access to the world’s best thinking on topics from strategy, leadership, change management and culture to existential questions about political economy, identity and creating meaningful lives. They expand what is imaginable and enable us to develop a shared archive of case studies and concepts, enriching the coaching conversation. Often, clients use them as conversation-starters with their own teams — taking the coaching beyond our work into shaping how their organisation works.

Who reads it

Executives and board members of some of Africa’s most consequential businesses, and founders and leaders operating in diverse contexts — alongside people who lead without title — united by curiosity, ambition, and the desire to build a better world .

Who you will encounter

  • Arundhati Roy
  • Jim Collins
  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Roger Martin
  • Caster Semenya
  • Ed Catmull
  • Amy Edmondson
  • Rassie Erasmus
  • Nancy Kline
  • Abdulrazak Gurnah
  • Linda Graham
  • Thomas Moore
  • Rita McGrath
  • Jerry Colonna
  • Julie Zhuo
  • Wole Soyinka
  • Peter Drucker
  • Connie Noonan Hadley
  • Reed Hastings
  • Erin Meyer
  • Wahbie Long
  • John McPhee
  • Nadia Owusu
  • Verne Harnish
  • Daniel Pink
  • Skin
  • Elton John
  • Barbara Kingsolver
  • Justice Malala
  • Marcus Buckingham
  • Es’kia Mphahlele
  • John Kay

Strategy sits beside fiction. A Nobel laureate sits beside a rugby coach. The diversity is deliberate — real problems do not respect disciplinary boundaries, and the passage that unlocks a board conflict is as likely to come from a novel as from a business school press.

How it began

Strategy, Soul & Self shares the inspiration I uncover whilst immersed for 600 hours a year in the best thinking across strategy, organisational excellence, leadership, and personal mastery.

In the early days of my coaching practice, I would share a case study, or a mental model, and I could see immediate impact. My clients suddenly had more possibility. I wasn’t telling them what to do. I couldn’t and cannot, I am not an expert on their context — they are — but the insights, inspiration and provocations expanded their options. What had seemed fixed, seemed more malleable; what seemed impossible was now imaginable.

Strategy, Soul & Self emerged from that: it shares the learning and inspiration I bring to my coaching work. Today, my clients influence the learning behind the letter. I spend my working week in conversation with chief executives, founders and senior executives across multiple sectors. Their challenges shape my scholarship: if a theme surfaces across a dozen unrelated leaders, it is not a coincidence — and if they are grappling with it, you probably are too.

Subscribe to Strategy, Soul & Self

If you value intellectual eclecticism, appreciate that the world is complex and love the power of intentional action, then you might enjoy Strategy, Soul & Self.

Prefer to talk first? Email me to begin a conversation