Inspiration comes from unexpected places. This week I read Jay Rayner’s final column for Observer Food Monthly—every word was bang on the money. Food should be served on plates and not in shoes or tiny wheelbarrows, concept menus are an abomination.

It made me think: what if I wrote my own set of Hot Takes on two decades in comms? And so I did. And had fun writing it.

Most intranets are bad. Not because the tech is bad—though it often is—but because there’s no strategy. An intranet without a strategy is just a dumping ground with a search box. And no, AI won’t fix it.

Read the full rant here.

Clearly, this hit a nerve—it’s one of the most liked and commented-on things I’ve shared in ages. It’s funny how stuff I knock out in a couple of minutes is a hit while content I take ages crafting and designing barely makes a dent. I guess you can overthink these things.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn is pushing everyone to do video now, but somehow I can’t quite bring myself to do it, even for this. I’m a written word person… do I really have to?

This week at work

• Helping one of our clients to hire a product manager to lead their intranet programme. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of having one person who owns, cares about and champions the intranet to stakeholders. Behind every successful intranet is one tenacious, passionate person at the helm. Someone who makes the case, works with teams to help them build out their content, sells the benefits and makes sure these benefits are realised. This is a critical hire for the future of the programme, and it’s refreshing to work with an organisation who recognise this, and keen to find the right person and give them the autonomy and authority to make it a success.
• Worked with a client on preparing an awards submission. They’re incredibly proud of what we jointly delivered — and so are we, so we’d like to share it with the industry.
• Kicked off prep for this year’s 300 Seconds x Camp Digital, where I curate a section on the main stage agenda to showcase new speakers and perspectives, and in doing so help to build a more diverse pipeline of industry speakers. Prepped guidelines and caught up with the organisers. I’m really looking forward to it.
• Had a bunch of social posts Do Numbers, which prompted me to take a look at a writing project I’d put on the back burner.
• Started work on a keynote I’m doing in the US in the spring. The earlier I start prepping, the more confident I am on the day. So I’m getting on to this one early before I get too busy.

Also this week

Saw The Libertines at the Paradiso, and it was an absolute joy. Even the pre-gig DJ set was pure 2004 indie disco singalong classics, setting the tone nicely. The band were as good as I’ve ever seen them—less early-00s Brixton chaos, more tight and energetic. Great crowd, perfect setlist, and pure nostalgia.

Finally made it to the Joan Miró sculpture exhibition at Beelden aan Zee before it closes. The windswept Dutch coast in February isn’t quite the sunny Barcelona rooftop where I first saw his work, but the collection was as playful as ever. Well worth it.

My next PowerPints appearance is locked in for 9 March, so I’ve started on new material. If you’re in Amsterdam, come cheer me on—or heckle.

International Women’s Day is coming up this week, and so too is the annual round of corporate hypocrisy.

Every year, we see companies posting about IWD, celebrating women in the workplace while doing little to advance gender equality in practice. They talk about empowerment but pay women less. They post about inclusion while sidelining working mothers. They share glossy graphics but resist flexible working that enables working mums to thrive at work.

Having taken last year off, and with orgs rapidly rolling back their meagre DEI efforts and Twitter dying its arse, I’m getting back on the case this year calling out firms which say one thing about equality on LinkedIn but do another in practice.

If your employer is one of them, I want to hear from you. I know that calling out your own company is career-limiting. But I don’t have a career to limit—so this year, once again, I’m offering Asking Awkward Questions As A Service.

I’ve cleared my diary to do some serious shitposting. I’ve already started compiling a database of the worst offenders.

📩 DM me or fill in my anonymous form to tell me about the gap between your employer’s words and actions. I’ll do the calling out so you don’t have to.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting
What’s in my browser this week

I liked these tips from Giles Turnbull on working in the open. It’s always a tricky balance. I share what I’m doing partly because writing helps me untangle thorny questions and articulate issues. But most of our work is with private sector clients, where commercial and reputational concerns mean I can’t share much detail.

Turnbull suggests embracing “bad first drafts.” These weeknotes are where I do that. I share what I can, but worry it’s too vague, leaving people unclear on what we actually do.

Still working out the balance between confidentiality and openness. I’d love to hear from others in the private sector trying to work out loud.

📺 Watching
On my telly

Two-year-old documentary The Search For Instagram’s Worst Con Artist was on my Netflix homepage this week, and sucked me in immediately. It’s a two-part series on a wellness influencer who claimed to have cured her cancer through healthy eating alone.  I missed the entire story at the time, but the sheer scale of it – and the absence of any due diligence from parties who should have known better – was quite astonishing.

It’s trending again because a drama on the same case has just come out. Which I am going to watch next, obviously.

📚 Reading
Books I’ve (tried to) read

Nothing much this week.

🎧 Listening
In my earholes

Not content with giving us the likes of the IT Crowd, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, The Mighty Boosh and What We Do in the Shadows, Matt Berry is also a brilliant musician. I’ve had a couple of his albums (Phantom Birds and Heard Noises) on repeat this week.

🧳 Travel

Nothing coming up immediately but I’ve got a fair bit booked now for the months ahead. Let’s meet up in:

• Copenhagen (8-11 April)
• Chicago (27 April-1 May)
• Toronto (1-5 May)
• Glasgow (8-15 May)
• Milan (18-20 June)

Inevitably I’ll also be in London a few times.

Connections

I caught up with Nebius‘ Peter Morley for chat about AI, scaling at speed, the value of a good editor and why no podcast should be over an hour long.

Coverage

I wrote this piece for Reworked about the state of enterprise social networks—why the grand vision of open, company-wide conversation never quite materialised and why social collaboration hasn’t disappeared, just fragmented.

ESNs have largely shifted from collaboration spaces to corporate broadcast channels, while employees now default to Teams, Slack, and smaller, purpose-driven communities. The challenge isn’t the tech; it’s organisational culture. If ESNs aren’t driving meaningful engagement, maybe it’s time to rethink their role.