Why subscribe?

Sometimes, I write things.

Ok, more like frequently.

Ok, incessantly.

Sometimes tens or hundreds of people seem to like absorbing and engaging with these writings. Maybe you are one such person. If not, maybe I can persuade you to become one. When I did this 10 years ago, it grew into a community of tens of thousands. I would love to see that happen again and be even more impactful and constructive, and I am willing to work for it.

I am intent on growing an audience and a community around a few key subjects that I don’t feel get enough useful discussion elsewhere. I am also intent on moving writing from my pastime to my full-time.

Your participation and support will make that possible.

This newsletter has a modest number of subscribers who tend to read everything published. I am totally comfortable with that. I would rather have a small community tuned into one another than a vast legion of subscribers who don’t engage. So I am perfectly content to grow this project gradually. Organically.

My posts will usually be about leadership. I find that most of the self-labelled “insight” available on this subject is rubbish quality, and a good bit of it is just pure drivel. “Follow these five tips!” … “The 19 essential traits” … or other forms of cookbook-esque oversimpflication. Most of this crap will actually make you worse at leading people if you take it onboard.

And the memes. My God, the memes. What they lack in originality or substance they make up for in sheer volume. Though admittedly I won’t shy away from those making a point with wit or sarcasm.

The subject is too damned important to settle for what is commonly available. It cries out for precision and nuance. It needs a voice of experience and vibrant argument. It wants to be situated in the complex and sometimes pathological context of organizational life … because if it ain’t happening in an organization, it ain’t leadership.

Fascinating insights in vignette form, leaving you with wheels turning and maybe even an actionable takeaway. That will be the munition of choice here. I will at all times endeavor to give you something you’re unlikely to find anywhere else.

Of course, I won’t constrain myself to only leadership as a subject. You might see posts about other stuff. Especially Amazon and the US Air Force, my two former employers and objects of enduring fascination. Business, operations, legal issues, culture.

Basically I will take advantage of free agency by writing whatever I damn please … whatever is on my radar. Hell I will even delve into some personal stories and testimonials.

But you won’t see (a) partisan politics, (b) opinion masquerading as fact/vice versa, or (c) clickbait. All killer, no filler baby.

I write every day. On the days you don’t see posts, it means I got distracted by other chores, by travelling, by attempting to epigenetically improve my biological clock, by my obsession with Manchester City football, or by a leaf blowing across the ground.

Or it might mean I wrote something only to conclude it wasn’t good enough to deserve your attention. Your time matters. I won’t waste it.

You can support this newsletter. And you can pay whatever you want.

The paid member's version of The Radar will be exactly the same as the unpaid version.

So why pay?

Because I like doing this, and I also think there's value in it. People should be paid for the value they create. When creators are paid for creating, this encourages them to keep creating, and makes it easier for them to do so.

Maybe you agree in principle. And maybe you also agree that you want me to not only keep creating this newsletter, but have more time to spend on it.

However, I'm aware some people can't afford to pay or might not want to, so there will be no paywall. Everyone gets the same newsletter.

If you can't pay or if you don't see value to this newsletter, do nothing. You're all set. I still deeply appreciate you reading my work whenever you choose to do so.

But if you can afford to pay, and agree there's value to this newsletter, and you want to show that by paying, you can subscribe using the button just below.

First we should talk numbers.

I think $10 monthly is fair. That's roughly $.50 a newsletter. Heck, you can’t even get a day-old wiener at the 7-11 for that. My writing isn’t checkin’ itself in the mirror or anything, but I’ll put it up against anything found under a heat lamp. You don’t want to be eating that stuff anyway.

But honestly, anything you want to pay is fine with me, including nothing.

Click here to pay $1/month (~£0.80)
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If you want to subscribe at $10/month (~£8.00), push this little button right here:

The first 50 pledges, if ever that number is reached, will get a signed copy of my forthcoming book Frustrated Incorporated: How Organizations Create Misery and What Leaders Can Do About It.

If you prefer, you can receive a signed copy of my other forthcoming book Top Down: How Authoritarian Culture Put America’s Air Force At Risk.

I am not certain yet when either of these will be published. They are being written in parallel and I’m not sure which will be (a) done first or (b) published first.

If you choose to pay, thank you.

Either way, I'm going to go on writing these newsletters for as long as I want, and you're going to keep getting them for as long as you want. In the fullness of time, I will add videos, keynote excerpts, and podcasts.

And if I stop producing, I presume you'll stop paying.

And that’s all I have to say about that.