Office Hours

One hour. One work problem. A fresh pair of eyes.

We all have those times in work when we feel something isn't quite right.

The idea is good, but somehow it isn't flowing through to value, or the work is harder than it should be.

The presentation has become 47 slides and still doesn't say the thing you want it to. You've got a difficult conversation coming up and don't feel prepared to deal with it. You've been staring at the same problem for three weeks and realised no amount of staring is going to solve it.

Or perhaps you simply have something interesting and want to see what happens when someone else looks at it.

Bring it to Office Hours.

One hour. Just you, me and the thing.

£180 · 60 minutes · Online

Book an Office Hour

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Bring me something.

You bring the idea, the problem, the situation, the talk, the challenge.

It can be an idea. A piece of work. A problem. A decision. A presentation. A workshop you're trying to build. A communication that isn't working. A project that has meandered off track. A personal project you're looking to launch. Something you're trying to explain. Something you're trying to make.

Or something you can't quite put your finger on yet.

It doesn't need to be tidy. In fact, it probably shouldn't be.

You don't need a beautifully written brief explaining the situation, complete with objectives, review boards, stakeholders and a document in lovely fonts.

Bring the thing.
We'll look at it together.

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What happens in an hour?

First, we look.

What's actually going on here?

What are we assuming? What matters? What doesn't? What have we missed? Is the problem the thing we think it is? What problem are we trying to solve and how do we know it's a problem?

What abilities, skills or craft are we looking to grow? What needs to happen to the idea to make it move towards something valuable?

Sometimes the useful bit is simply getting the problem into focus.

Then, we turn it around.

We'll question it, pull it apart, make connections, try different angles and see what happens.

I might challenge the way you're framing it. You might realise you've been solving the wrong problem.

We might discover that the thing you thought needed fixing doesn't need fixing at all.

That's the point of another pair of eyes.

Then we decide what to do.

Not a 47-point action plan.

Just a clearer view of the situation and some sensible things to try next.

You leave with something you can use.

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This isn't coaching.

I should be clear here, this is not traditional coaching. There is no six-week programme with glossy videos and a PDF.

There is no homework, other than coming prepared with the thing you're wrangling.

No workbook. No personal development journey. No matrix to complete. And I won't be asking you to rate your feelings on a scale of one to ten.

Office Hours is much simpler.

You bring something you're wrestling with.
We spend an hour looking at it properly.

I've spent much of my career doing exactly this – looking at how ideas, work and organisations actually behave once you truly learn to see.

Sometimes that means finding the flaw in an idea. Sometimes it means finding the idea hiding inside the mess. Sometimes it means noticing that everyone has been trying to solve a completely different problem.

Often, it's just about seeing what's really going on.

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What might you bring?

An idea

You've got something you think could be good, but you're not sure what it is yet. Or maybe it needs framing better, or more clearly, or with more focus on the value it brings to the people it's going to serve.

Maybe the idea is stuck between deciding to invest in it and it becoming something useful for others.

Maybe you have several ideas and not enough time, energy and attention to do them all – that is often the case – and you need a fresh set of eyes.

Maybe you have an idea for a talk or workshop and want to bounce the idea around.

A piece of work

A talk, presentation, workshop, article, proposal, project or communication that needs another set of eyes.

A problem

Something at work isn't working and you can't quite see why.

Those categories aren't rules.

You can arrive with a half-formed thought scribbled in a notebook if that's where you are.

That's fine.

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A fresh pair of eyes is a surprisingly useful thing.

We get used to our own work. We're often deeply embedded in it.

We know what we meant to say, so we see what we meant rather than what's actually there.

We know the history of the project, so every decision has a perfectly reasonable explanation.

We know the people involved, the politics,the culture, the process, the work, the previous attempt, the thing that happened six months ago.

Sometimes you need someone who doesn't know any of that.

Someone who can simply ask:

“Hang on. Why are we doing it this way?”

That's what I'm offering.

Not answers on demand.

A closer look from a different, experienced, perspective.

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A little about me

I'm Rob Lambert.

I've spent the last couple of decades working with communication, organisations and ideas — as a journalist, filmmaker, manager, Vice President in Tech and HR, a leader, consultant, writer, teacher and independent advisor.

I've helped scale a business from barely making payroll to an exit. I've consulted with enterprise companies struggling to deliver value as costs rise. I've changed how large organisations work in meaningful ways.

My work always involves making difficult things easier to understand – all in service of turning ideas into things people can actually use.

Cultivated is where all of that comes together.

I write. I make things. I teach. I run workshops. I give talks. I take photographs. I spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about why some ideas become useful things and others disappear into a PowerPoint deck with nice fonts.

Office Hours is the simplest way to work together.

You bring something.

I bring a fresh pair of eyes.

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Ready?

You don't need to have the problem perfectly defined. You don't need to prepare a presentation. You don't need to know what the answer is.

That's rather the point.

£180 · 60 minutes · Online