01
I’ll probably ask why
Not to challenge everything for the sake of it. I just find it hard to work around a problem without understanding how it got there. A surprising amount of useful work starts with “Why do we do it this way?”
How I work
Can you ‘Martify’ it?
Colleagues at Google turned my name into a verb. Whenever something felt messy, confusing or stuck, someone would say: “Can you Martify it?”
It was a joke, mostly. It could mean a slide, a process, a program plan, or occasionally an idea that existed as three bullet points and a hope.
What they were really asking was: can you take this from here?
Mar·ti·fy /ˈmɑːrtɪfaɪ/ verb
to take something messy, confusing or stuck, and leave it clearer than you found it.
That's probably the best description of how I work. Give me something ambiguous — a program that needs scaling, a problem nobody quite owns, a deck that isn't landing, an idea that needs turning into something real — and I'll work out what matters, bring the right people together and move it forward.
02
I like an owner and a next step
A good conversation can still go nowhere. I’m usually the person making sure we leave knowing what we decided, who’s doing what and what happens next.
03
I think about the person on the receiving end
Of the program, the email, the process, the presentation. What do they know already? What do they actually need? What are they likely to misunderstand or ignore? It changes how I build things.
04
I don’t like being a bottleneck
If something only works because I’m there to explain it, I’m not quite finished. I like leaving behind enough structure that other people can pick things up and keep going.