Empirical evangelist. Strategic thinker. Change catalyst. Data sleuth. That’s me.

There was not any one event which lead me to this understanding of myself. Perhaps the foremost influence was the environment in which I grew up. The economic austerity and simmering social turmoil which wracked Jamaica in the 1980s and much of the ‘90s forged my progressive world view, guided the type of professional activities I sought and shaped the analytic perspective I brought to bear on these activities.

My desire to use my knowledge to address some of the problems I was interested in lead me to work on development issues. I was heartened by the achievements of the teams I worked with. But I also recognised that the structures within which we worked had many dysfunctions: too many good intentions and too few soft or hard skills, too backward looking, not enough genuine inclusion of stakeholders and far too much focus on discourse. As a consequence, I evolved into a policy analyst. Much of my work focuses on helping organizations to define, measure and achieve their good governance and social inclusion objectives.

More recently, I have become very interested an area I never thought I would be: business! More specifically, I help businesses gain deep understanding of their customers through the use of rigorous but innovative research techniques. We know that both the customer and the environment in which marketing operates is changing. So why shouldn’t the tools used to understand why customers make the choices they do change too?

If you meet a policy analyst or marketing strategist who tells you they have ‘the answer’ to a problem which had bedeviled you for some time, tell them you will call them. Then don’t. The approach I take to my work is one that relies on a multidisciplinary perspective, searches for emergent solutions rather than invoking exhausted prescriptions and strives to achieve maximum buy-in from all stakeholders.

Doing this kind of work is the way I live my purpose.

Why I Blog

‘Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’ - George Orwell

I wanted to move away from online conversation as gladiatorial sport. So this is just my virtual space for using evidence to interrogate poorly informed opinion and action. I don’t pretend to be some fount of knowledge. But I am certain that asking the right questions of the lazy thinking that is often paraded as genuine insight is the fertile soil in which truly great solutions can germinate.