Why I Built Maypop Grove

I've been struggling.

I think a lot of people in the business of delivering change have been. Professional consultants, professional project managers — this has not been an easy time to do this work. The pace has accelerated, the tolerance for failure has tightened, and the people expected to lead transformation are often the most depleted people in the room.

I kept asking myself: what's my best way to contribute right now?

And I keep arriving at the same answer. My best contribution, with the widest reach, is to share what I've learned — specifically enough that someone can use it the next business day — and then get out of the way.

Three things I believe that led here

There is no one right way to do anything. So much professional energy is spent defending a methodology, a framework, a certification — as if the credential were the point. It isn't. The work is the point. Methods are tools. The constraint is always the real problem you're trying to solve.

When you're speaking, it should have value. I spent a year doing more listening than speaking — on LinkedIn, in conversations, in the communities I'm part of. I wanted to understand what was actually being said, whether there were new stories or whether we were mostly talking to ourselves. I came away with more respect for silence and more conviction that when I bring something, it has to be specific enough to be useful.

Progress happens in a million little steps. The way out of whatever we collectively need to get out of is through incremental motion — thousands of things getting done by thousands of people who've developed the capability to do them well. Not one big idea. The compounding effect of good work done consistently.

Who I am in this work

I'm a professional consultant who has invested in my credibility as a way to maintain my own confidence — and to help others grow in theirs.

More than 35 years of listening, learning, leading, and advising. More than 60 organizations across industries from local to international. Over a decade of teaching graduate and postgraduate delivery management, reaching thousands of professionals in person and through self-paced programs.

That's the foundation. Maypop Grove is what I do with it.

What this place is for

Not to be right. Not to sell a method. To be useful — to change leaders doing the hard, specific, often invisible work of moving organizations through transformation.

The Maypop passionflower is familiar and strange at once, giving generously, playing its part in the ecosystem without needing to dominate it. A grove gives shade, protection, and connection — a reminder to be part of a renewing cycle rather than extracting from one.

That's the aspiration. A place that gives what it has and makes the people who find it more capable of doing the same.

Welcome.