Sam Grayston

Tag: writing

  • Top threes of 2025

    A few years ago, I wrote a top three non-fiction list. This year, I wanted to revisit that idea and add in some other top threes that I’ve come across this year – particularly as a celebration of some of the arts. So I’m including fiction, art, TV, film, music.

    Some have reviews, some don’t. All have links to the creator. Some Amazon links are affiliate links.

    Many of these didn’t necessarily get released or created this year, but I came across them this year or they made the most difference to me this year, 2025.

    Non-fiction

    1. Building Utopia: Barbican Centre
    2. We need your Art
    3. Change the Culture, Change the Game

    1. Building Utopia, The Barbican Centre

    I was working for a bank in the city and the Barbican Centre was really nearby. I used to go there at lunch and enjoy the architecture. And the building grew and grew on me. I always had a sense that the Barbican was something impressive and had been an admirer of its brand for many years. In a past life, I wanted to be an architect too, so I knew it was a wonderful example of Brutalism. This book took my general interest and turned it into something of a passion. I doubt there will ever be a project as wholeheartedly wonderful as the idea of the Barbican. A complete, uncompromising vision for a creative lifestyle, housed together is something to be celebrated, whether you admire or detest Brutalism. Its vision is to be applauded. And this book is a celebration of that vision. 

    2. We Need Your Art, Amie McNee 

    On a first read, I thought this book was ok, but I know it’s better than that because it keeps coming back to me time and time again since I read it. It’s also got me starting to sketch again and share my shitty art on Instagram in the hope it makes someone smile or pause and enjoy it or reflect or whatever reaction they have. Artistry has become my word of the year because it’s so much more than just creativity. Artistry, to me, enthuses about the creation and appreciation of art in all its forms. Taste, beauty, creativity. All bound up in that word. And I don’t think I’d have landed on that word, were it not for Amie Mcnee’s book. 

    3. Change the Culture, Change the Game, Connors & Smith

    A simple idea, but really well articulated and structured. One of the best and most coherent examples I’ve seen of practical steps to move from existing culture, called C1, to a desired culture, called C2. I wish people would read this stuff rather than just put culture buzzwords on slides like ‘empowered’ and expect everyone to feel empowered.  It doesn’t work like that. This book will tell you how it could work instead. 

    Fiction

    1. Picture of Dorian Gray & Dracula
    2. At Night All Blood is Black
    3. I Let You Go

    1a & 1b & 1c. Picture of Dorian Gray & Dracula & Frankenstein 

    I went on a little (quite long) Gothic Horror fantasy over the summer (after having rewatched a bit of Penny Dreadful), reading A Picture of Dorian Gray, Dracula, and Frankenstein or A Modern Prometheus (to give it its full title). And they’re all brilliant in their own way. Something no film/tv version gets for me is the creepiness or underlying sadness and desperation of these characters. Dorian Gray and Dracula are often painted as characters to lust after, but from my reading at least, they seem spiteful, nasty pieces of work that are super creepy. I loved voyaging back in time to indulge in these classic gothic horrors. They’re great and I’d recommend taking a bit of time for all of them.

    3. At Night All Blood is Black, David Diop

    This mesmerising tale follows Alfa Ndiaye, a Senegalese soldier fighting for France in the First World War, who is traumatised by the brutal death of his closest friend. As grief and guilt overwhelm him, his acts of violence escalate, blurring the boundary between sanity and madness while exposing the psychological and moral cost of colonial warfare.

    4. I Let You Go, Clare Mackintosh

    No spoilers, but I was properly suckered in by the twist. A child dies in a car accident. A woman starts again in a remote town. 

    Art

    1. Nina Tans, Mull & Iona map
    2. Ashleigh Proud, Sacred trees
    3. Noah Davis, Barbican Centre, Painting for my Dad

    1. Nina Tans, Mull & Iona map

    Commissioned by us after our transformational visit to Mull this summer, Nina Tans art maps are utterly stunning, as are her bladderwrack watercolours.

    2. Ashleigh Proud, Sacred Trees leaves

    We love Ashleigh Proud’s work and have it dotted all round our home. Her love of all things natural and the transformation of those ideals into stunning enamel art speaks very deeply to us. We acquired a number of pieces for our bedroom, and the leaves of the sacred trees (an alternative calendar to the zodiac or months) has to be one of my favourites.

    3. Noah Davis Retrospective at the Barbican Centre

    I hadn’t come across Noah Davies before, but I had a spare couple of hours in London this year and spent it immersed in the wonderful and prolific work of Noah Davies, who tragically died very young but produced some wonderful work. This piece called ‘Painting for my Dad’ really spoke to me.

    From ChatGPT: Noah Davis was an American painter and installation artist, born in Seattle in 1983 and active until his untimely death from a rare form of cancer in 2015 at the age of 32. He became known for his deeply evocative figurative paintings that explore everyday Black life through a painterly language that blends realism and abstraction, challenging traditional narratives in Western art. 

    TV

    1. Shrinking S2 & Severance S2
    2. Alien Earth
    3. Pluribus

    Shrinking S2 and Severance S2, Apple TV

    I’ve plonked these two together because they need their first series. Both Apple TV series, they’re a bit more niche, but super high quality. Severance is proper genius level different and intriguing. I kept looking for the same high I got watching the first series, which wasn’t there, but still an extraordinary outing. Shrinking S2 I think built on great foundations, laid by Ted Lasso (same writers and producers I think), developed through S1 and into S2. It’s a smart, funny, human comedy-drama about therapists working through their own stuff as well as helping others that is well worth a watch. 

    Alien Earth, Disney+

    Whereas Alien Romulus was a travesty, using CGI Ian Holm, and the most pathetic stealing and delivery of ‘get away from her, you bitch’, Alien Earth is quite an interesting take on the Alien story. 

    I rather enjoyed the premise of competing corporations researching multiple alien lifeforms and playing with human consciousness and synthetics. Sure, it’s probably unnecessarily gory at times, and some of it is a bit ridiculous, but overall, as a series with something a bit different going on, I thought Alien Earth was good. 

    3. Pluribus, Apple TV

    None of the reviews I’ve seen so far seem to talk about what seems glaringly obvious to me (the joy of artistic interpretation, I suppose?!) – that Pluribus is about the rejection of AI/LLMs. 

    This is the story of how through some virus, all surviving humans become  connected as ‘we’ – sharing the same knowledge, background, information, collective approach – and obsessed with making the remaining non-connected humans ‘happy’. It seems to me that this is exactly the approach of LLMs – gather all the content together and provide it back as an all-knowing voice concerned with making the user happy. It’s also about the unaffected human, a writer, rejecting the desire to give up all her life and data and memories and creativity in order to join. I’m with her. Lots of reviews seems to be disappointed with the pacing, but I’m loving this series. 

    Honourable mentions for:

    • Smoke
    • The Last Frontier

    Film

    1. Nosferatu
    2. Poor Things
    3. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

    Music

    1. Live God, Nick Cave / Wild God 2024
    2. Gumshoe, Samantha Crain
    3. Euro Country, CMAT
    4. Good to You, Silvertwin 
    5. South of the Circle, Ed Critchley 

    Too hard to just pick three.

    South of the Circle is proper niche, but I really enjoyed the iPad game when it came out a couple of years ago – primarily for this soundtrack. It’s only just been released and I’m delighted to hear it again.

    That’s it!

    You can probably tell I’ve had something of a gothic horror year in books and film…

    What makes your top threes this year?

  • Stop the Arsonists: Better Leadership for Burning Workplaces

    Stop the Arsonists: Better Leadership for Burning Workplaces

    “I’m always firefighting. There’s no time to think.”

    I can’t remember the first time I heard this phrase, but I hear it A LOT – particularly when I’m coaching senior leaders in transformative and project leadership roles.

    And whilst evocative of modern time-management (or lack thereof) has to be a better way, right? Well this got me thinking, and a confluence of three things sparked this blog:

    1. Someone using this phrase in a coaching session…again!
    2. Reading about systems thinking.
    3. Watching the Apple TV+ show, Smoke.

    A bit of context about each, and then the thought…

    The phrase

    It paints a clear picture…or we can all think of the meme with the cartoon dog in the house that’s on fire saying ‘this is fine’…everything’s going a million miles per hour and we have to move from one crisis to the next, urgent to urgent to urgent – never doing the important things we promised ourselves we’d do, like strategic thinking, self-development, 1:1s with others, improving processes, etc.

    Systems Thinking

    This is something that I’ve dabbled with on and off for years. In the first instance, I didn’t really get it. Someone sent me a video of blobs moving around rectangles and said ‘I think you’re going to love it’…

    More recently, I’ve come to understand more about systems and how interconnected everything is – that is, whatever happens may be as of a result of something else far away in the system, or whatever we do may have far reaching and unintended consequences on the wider system. And that, traditionally, when things go wrong people tend to analyse; that is, break the problem down into smaller and smaller constituent parts – e.g. an app fails and analysis tells us a line of code needs rewriting, whereas Systems thinking asks us to synthesise, or to look up at the wider systemic nudges that may cause the problem – e.g. an app fails because of management pressure to ship fast on smaller budgets.

    Smoke

    This is a show on Apple tv+ about a fire scene investigator partnering up with a cop to identify and catch two serial arsonists. No spoilers, but it’s far more compelling than I thought it might be to start with. The fire scene investigator character, played by Taron Egerton, often delivers talks to trainees about the chaos of fire and being prepared.

    The confluence

    This got me thinking, if a fire kept happening in the same place, you wouldn’t want to keep relying on the fire brigade/department to come and put it out…you’d solve the reason why the same thing kept happening…so why don’t we do this at work when people describe their entire jobs as ‘fire fighting’?

    I can’t imagine a fire fighter loving having to revisit a scene time and time again if a fire keeps getting ignited there – they’d want to put some other measures in place – systemic changes – sprinklers, better equipment, arrest the arsonists, create escape plans.

    This approach could apply to the highly flammable systems in the workplace because it’s not ok to perpetually expect colleagues to be fire-fighters – presumably we want them spending their time adding value and putting their hard-won skills and experiences to work rather than rushing around, meeting to meeting, putting out things that have gone wrong.

    Setup Sprinklers

    In the immediate term, a knowledge-work equivalent of the sprinkler system might need setting up. If a fire keeps breaking out, having something to immediately dampen it down might be a reasonable temporary solution. In our imagined knowledge-work based equivalent, maybe that’s a standing meeting, decision forum, Andon Cord, or emergency WhatsApp channel that can be triggered straight away to solve the biggest crises and challenges.

    Improve Equipment and Systems

    The system is broken if fires keep breaking out. The system needs fixing. In the same way that if a restaurant kept catching fire they might need some better quality ovens, in our knowledge-work environment, we need higher quality systems that avoid these fires breaking out. Maybe it’s visualising all the work that’s going on so that people can see a potential fire brewing. Maybe it’s limiting work in progress so that more work can’t be shoved into an already overloaded system. Maybe it’s building in slack, recovery, creativity time into work.

    To continue the fire metaphor, sometimes a fire-break is required in order to break the spread of the chaos and put new systems in place and so it may be with our work systems. It’s not ok that colleagues describe their working days as perpetually being on fire, we have to find better systems.

    Arrest the Arsonists

    If you’re the fire fighter in this scenario, then I’m going to assume it’s not you lighting the fires…you keep putting them out. So who IS lighting them? Stop them. Take their jerry cans of fuel away.

    If it’s people adding stuff to your plate, check out the No Repertoire from Greg McKeown; if it’s people bringing you down, stop spending time with them; if people change their mind every five minutes, perhaps introduce something like the RAPID decision-making framework and force people to take some responsibility.

    Develop Escape Plans

    And, if it can’t be prevented, fire breaks out – then you need an escape plan. Getting away from your desk for a minute to assess the situation, having a friend to call, taking a holiday, going for a walk all may be release valves for dealing with these situations.

    There’s a reason firefighters have to have breaks and spend a lot of time training – it’s not tenable to be doing it all the time. And it isn’t for us either. We need breaks, we need training, we need recovery if we’re going to have to fight fires at work.

    These are some ideas I’ve been kicking around on firefighting. What other techniques could people try to change the system and stop the arsonists?

  • 25 Lists for a Meaningful 2025: Reflection and Planning

    25 Lists for a Meaningful 2025: Reflection and Planning

    The start of a new year is the perfect time to think ahead. While I’m not a big believer in New Year’s resolutions, I do find value in using lists and prompts to set out what matters to me. Each year since 2021, I create a series of lists that help me prioritise, reflect, and plan. Every week or two, I revisit these lists to check my progress and make adjustments.

    Here are the 25 lists I’m compiling for 2025:

    Self-Reflection and Values

    1. Who am I?

    This grounding question is inspired by a coaching session with the brilliant James Victore. Set aside an hour, ask yourself “Who am I?” and jot down everything that comes to mind. Then, go back and reflect on each statement—keep what feels true, and let go of the rest.

    2. Things I Value

    As part of my VAPOR planning framework (Values, Activities, Plans, Organisation, Reflection), I identify my core values and the daily activities that help me live them out.

    3. Sayings I Live By

    A curated collection of quotes, mantras, and sayings that inspire and resonate with me—featuring Dieter Rams, Miles Davis, Tolkien, Maya Angelou, Nancy Kline, and, yes, even Ted Lasso.

    Looking Forward to 2025 and Beyond

    4. What I Want to Happen in 2025

    Rather than resolutions that I ‘resolve’ to do, this is a list of aspirations, goals, and ideas for the year—a mix of the intentional and the hopeful.

    5. What I Want to Leave in 2024

    Life isn’t just about adding; it’s also about subtracting. This list captures habits, behaviours, or practices I’d like to leave behind—like people-pleasing or apologising unnecessarily.

    6. Things I’d Like to Achieve in This Decade

    Turning 40 has inspired me to think long-term—whether it’s writing a book or becoming conversational in Italian.

    Fostering Creativity and Ideas

    7. Fragile Ideas Worthy of Reverence

    In Jony Ive’s commencement speech for the California College of Arts, he talks about the reverence for ideas his design lecturer inspired in him. Ive talks about how fragile and fleeting ideas are and how quickly they can dissipate if not treated with kindness and reverence. Whether it’s a good idea or not, appreciating that the idea itself is worthy of some reverence and exploration before being implemented or dismissed. 

    8. Moments of Resonance

    A new addition for 2025, this list tracks moments that deeply resonate with me—from personal experiences to art or design. I then reflect on why they resonate and how to invite more of that into my life. Mine’s a mish-mash of minimalism and mess, of modern and old, and I’m looking forward to working on it. 

    9. Creative Things to Do

    Creativity is one of my core values, and this list ensures I prioritise it by giving me a go-to bank of creative ideas.

    10. Ideas from the Web

    A place to store intriguing ideas, apps, shortcuts, automations, etc, I encounter online that I’d like to try out.

    Daily Practices and Tools for Growth

    11. ‘Got a Minute’ List

    For those small pockets of time when it’s tempting to scroll mindlessly, this list offers alternatives—like stretching, reading a page of a book, or reconnecting with an old friend.

    12. What I’m Grateful For

    While I practise daily gratitude, this list captures the big-ticket items that anchor my sense of abundance.

    13. What Have I Learned?

    From small insights to significant lessons, this list ensures I don’t forget what I’ve gained.

    14. Things I Do Better Than Most

    For those tough days, this list reminds me of the unique skills and talents others value in me.

    Relationships and Social Capital

    15. Social Capital

    A reflection on the relationships I want to nourish and the people I want to stay connected with.

    16. Personal Board of Directors

    This list includes trusted individuals (real, fictional, or idealised) who I can advise me in my best interest.

    17. People I Should Know

    A guide to intentional networking and building meaningful relationships.

    Achievements and Memories

    18. Biggest Accomplishments

    A go-to reminder for when I doubt my progress, this list celebrates what I’ve achieved so far.

    19. Career Bucket List

    From keynote speaking to publishing a book, this list captures the career milestones I aspire to reach.

    20. Shows I’ve Been Involved With

    A nostalgic look at the plays and performances I’ve been part of—it’s quite a list now!

    Gratitude

    21. Gifts Given

    It’s rewarding to remember the gifts I’ve shared and the experiences I’ve created for others.

    22. Gifts Received

    Practising gratitude by recalling the kindness and thoughtfulness I’ve been lucky enough to receive.

    23. Nice Things I’ve Got for Myself

    Acknowledging the moments I’ve treated myself and appreciating my ability to indulge occasionally.

    Practical and Aspirational

    24. Places I’d Like to Go

    There are so many places to explore—this list keeps my wanderlust alive.

    25. Things for a Quiet Day

    When an unexpected quiet day arrives, this list ensures it doesn’t slip away unnoticed.

    Personally, I keep these lists on Notion, adding comments, pictures, and tags to stay organised. Every couple of weeks, I review them, check my progress, and make small tweaks to my plans for the fortnight ahead.

    I hope these lists inspire you as they’ve inspired me. They’ve proven far more effective than New Year’s resolutions!

    What’s on your list for 2025?

    This revised structure starts with introspection and flows naturally towards actionable and aspirational items. Does this feel more cohesive?