The Portal Notebook prototype. An idea collider.

I've made the decision to start freelancing from October and I am really very excited about it. It's something I've wanted to do for a while and the timing–never perfect–is good enough. As well as being an opportunity to work with some new folks and get exposed to different ways of working, many people will know that I have a lot of opinions on how businesses should be run. Running my own business means I can put my money where my mouth is. I also see this as a good way of experimenting with different futures of work.

If you haven't worked with me before, or not for a while, these days I might best be described as a design strategist. Here are the types of problems I've become very good at solving over the last eleven years:

• You need to understand how the world is changing, how it might change further, and explore how best to respond.
• You think you've identified an opportunity, but you don't know how to win in the space.
• You've got a team who is rushing off to build and buy things, but no one agrees on what they're aiming for or how to make tough, coherent decisions.
• You've got a team coming together for the first time for an important project and they need to work well together quickly. (Or you need to reset a dysfunctional team.)
• You've launched something, internally or externally, but it's not working as well as you anticipated.

I'm happiest leading or working in cross-functional teams of designers, developers, researchers and other strategists. People I've worked with recently say things like:

• "He consistently brings smart insights which help me see things differently or connect the dots in a new way."
• "It was a relief when we found out Charlie was coming on board the project."
• "Charlie makes strategy human."

If you've got something you think could benefit from having a bit of my brain on it, or you know someone else who could, give me a shout. I'm available from 1st October.

It's worth giving fair warning that, in the interests of finding work, you'll probably see me more active on LinkedIn. I intend to write more about things I'm interested in and interact more with interesting people, rather than take my place on the stage of the LinkedIn performance.

Thinking about being visible on LinkedIn made me think about status (most things make me think about status, to be fair). I'm simplifying here, but in any given culture, status is awarded to those who figure out the rules of the status game and adhere to them the most. Quoting from The Status Game: 'the culture will pressure you in many subtle ways to replace your values with the system's'. LinkedIn, and other social networks, very unsubtly pressure you to adhere to the system's values because they encode those values in the algorithms which promote and suppress content.

Kyle Chayka writes in Filterworld: "The outcome of such algorithmic gatekeeping is the pervasive flattening that has been happening across culture. By flatness I mean homogenization but also a reduction into simplicity: the least ambiguous, least disruptive, and perhaps least meaningful pieces of culture are promoted the most."

Vitruvius, the Roman architect and inspiration for Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, theorised that builders using new materials and techniques, didn't innovate on the design of the structures they were building. Instead they 'petrified' the previous incarnation. Tree shelters into wooden dwellings into stone buildings. It feels to me that LinkedIn is doing the same thing–'petrifying' previous structures of work–especially with it's much loathed AI powered articles. Maybe this is why Zombie Leadership prevails. It's also something worth bearing in mind when you're buying and setting up software, even something like Slack, for work processes. Whether you think you're digitalising or digitising, what structures are you petrifying?

Last thing, I went for a beer with my friend James and he returned to me a prototype 'Portal Notebook' I made years ago.

The idea is that as you fill it, ideas will bleed through the pages creating connections you wouldn't have made otherwise. I still like it as an idea. Would you like one? Let me know and I'll happily knock one up for you.

It was a well-timed revival as earlier that day I signed up for Papercamp 3. Come along for a day of tactile geekery. I'll also be at the HCID Open Day on the 18th.