How I work
What I actually do is hold a field steady enough that the truth can show up without anyone losing face.
This is not a framework. It is the seven things I keep doing across very different rooms, because they keep being the things that matter.
What does this room actually feel like, before anyone has decided what to say?
Most rooms have a temperature before anyone speaks. Who is performing, who is bracing, who has stopped trying. I notice that first. I do not bring a framework into the room. I bring myself. The framework, if one is needed, arrives much later, and usually smaller than people expect.
What is true here that nobody has yet found the room to say?
Deep listening is not waiting for a gap to speak. It is letting the organisation explain itself through what it is carefully avoiding. I sit in twos and threes, not town halls. The receptionist usually knows. The new joiner sees what the long-tenured cannot. The board often knows last.
What becomes possible when nobody has to defend their position?
The work is to hold the room steady enough that people can stop performing. When that happens, the conversation everyone has been having around the edges finally walks into the middle. People cry, sometimes. People belly laugh, often. The temperature in the room changes. That is the moment.
What if this did not have to be quite so heavy?
Rooms that have been too serious for too long lose their access to the obvious. A small, well-placed bit of mischief lets the truth in sideways. I am not the entertainment. I am the person who refuses to let the meeting become the work. The work is what happens when the meeting stops behaving like one.
What is the single sentence this organisation has been quietly avoiding?
Naming the thing under the thing is most of the work. Not the strategy, the thing the strategy was quietly designed to avoid. I give it back in a sentence, usually a slightly uncomfortable one. The discomfort is usually the sign it landed where it needed to.
What is the one move that, if you actually made it, would change the rest?
Small, honest, well-placed action beats big strategy almost every time. One conversation held differently. One decision finally taken. One experiment given permission. The work is not to redesign the system in a week. It is to let it begin to change.
What would be lost if we made this easy?
I do not pitch. I do not write 80-slide decks. I do not run programmes that confuse motion with movement. I will not take work where the leader is hoping I will do their courage for them. I will sit beside it. I will not carry it on their behalf.
What people say after
"Marc is one of those rare people who genuinely changes the direction of your life without ever forcing it. He sees something in you before you can see it in yourself, and then creates the space for you to grow into it. There is a depth to how Marc works that is hard to explain until you experience it. It is not just strategic, it is human. If you get the chance to work with Marc, take it."
John M. Sweeney, Founder, Suspended Coffees. TEDx speaker.
"Marc is one of the clearest thinkers about the future of humanity, paired with a relentless desire to inspire others to participate in that future. It makes him a key cog both in Guernsey and worldwide."
James Maskell, Founder, author, speaker. Reversing chronic disease at scale.
Six doorways describe the situations I most often walk into. A conversation is how any of them begin.