Series 3 opens with Brian and Martin doing the thing the show is named after - sitting in the uncomfortable middle of a transition rather than analysing it from a safe distance. Brian is part-way through a staged shift from full-time consultant to full-time novelist, and describes himself as "neither and both": no longer fully one thing, not yet the other. Martin is moving deeper into independent advisory work, where the job has become helping teams who have no realistic plan walk into a room with no predetermined framework and trust that the work will emerge.
From there they open it out and argue that a plan should be a loosely-held theory rather than a fixed commitment, that frameworks and methods are means and not the destination, and that organisations are now in permanent flux — "instability is the stability of the moment." Listen in to find out how they end up deciding that a Farmer would make for a great guest and where the season could go (maybe?)- away from design talk, toward conversations with creatives, makers and farmers about how everyone is navigating the same flux. With a challenging reframe to close - how do we move from human-centred design to human-centred business.
Mentioned in this episode:
Plotters vs. pantsers
Design tools applied to fiction: journey mapping, experience maps, persona building
Brian's five-year plan (set out in 2022; consulting-to-writing transition)
Brian's publishing build-out: five novels published, a sixth in progress, further fantasy and crime series planned, Shopify site, TikTok shop
Lloyds Banking Group (where Martin and Brian previously worked together)
Learnings from the Pre-Fjord era of Accenture (Martin's early career)
Project-to-product operating model shift and Fractional head of product and design roles (Martin & Brian's client work)Multi-System pressures viewed through UK farming: inheritance tax changes, climate change, commodity price suppression
"Human-centred business" (Martin's closing reframe of human-centred design)
