Clubhouse Notes #01
Find the subject that keeps finding you
One of the questions we hear most often from executives is surprisingly simple.
"What should I write about?"
It sounds like a question about content. It rarely is.
More often, it's a question about perspective.
Before you begin, keep this in mind:
Your goal is not to find a broad topic. Your goal is to find a distinctive lens.
· Start with what genuinely occupies your mind.
· Refine it until it becomes unmistakably yours.
· Then connect it to a question that matters beyond your field.
Many people start with a field: leadership, AI, sustainability, geopolitics, communication.
The problem is that these are not subjects. They are territories. Trying to write about them usually produces what the internet already has enough of: competent, sensible – and interchangeable – content.
Interesting writing begins somewhere else.
It begins with the question you keep returning to, long after everyone else has moved on.
Richard Feynman once remarked that if you study a glass of wine closely enough, you eventually discover the whole universe inside it. The same principle applies to writing. Depth is rarely the result of covering more ground. More often, it comes from looking longer at one small part of it.
Take a sheet of paper. Don't think about audiences or algorithms. Instead, ask yourself:
· What do I always end up talking about?
· Which misconception in my field do I find myself correcting?
· What do I read when nobody expects me to?
· What could I speak about for two hours without preparing?
Don't stop at the first answer. Dig.
If your first answer is leadership, ask yourself: Which part of leadership?
Perhaps it is leadership teams.
Then ask again.
What about leadership teams?
Perhaps it is how they make decisions under pressure.
Then ask once more.
What exactly fascinates me about that?
Perhaps it is why experienced leadership teams postpone decisions they already know they have to make.
Now you have something worth writing about.
But there is one more step. The best writers never stay inside their niche. They use it as an entry point.
Ask yourself:
What is this really about?
Not organizational design. Not governance. Not decision-making.
Perhaps it is responsibility when certainty is impossible. Or trust. Or the fear of getting it wrong.
This is where your subject stops being specialized and starts becoming recognizable.
People may never have sat in an executive committee. They still know what it feels like to hesitate before making a difficult decision.
That is the bridge.
You enter through the specific.
You leave the reader thinking about something universal.
In practice
The method is surprisingly simple.
· Find your recurring curiosity. What keeps drawing you back?
· Refine it three times. Move from a broad field to a precise mechanism.
· Ask what it is really about. Strip away the professional language.
· Connect it to a universal human experience. Responsibility. Trust. Fear. Identity.
· Write through the specific – not around it. The narrower your entry point, the broader the recognition.
A distinctive voice rarely comes from trying to cover more ground.
It comes from seeing further into one small corner of it.