Maybe the side project was the strategy all along?

Speaking at Freelance Unlocked earlier this year made me realise something really interesting.

I was talking about how freelancers can — and should — feel free to break the rules of how you’re supposed to run a business. Because there’s no point in being self-employed if you just behave as if you’re employed.

And then, on a train — where else?! — I realised that part of my business has been behaving like a renegade function.

For years, I’ve thought of the Human Risk podcast as the place where I stretched the Human Risk brand into areas it probably didn’t belong. I did that because the only way I could sustain the work required was to use it as a vehicle to sate my own appetite for curiosity.

Rather than invite guests I 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 speak to, I invited those I 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 to speak to. The guest list went where my curiosity took me.

Yes, that included behavioural scientists and compliance experts. But also, and more frequently, historians, designers, comedians, campaigners and others whose work intrigued me.

And now I’m realising that far from the podcast being the rule breaker, perhaps it is actually the cheerleader for where the business should go. Because it’s already where a lot of my work takes me.

Not away from compliance, but deeper into what compliance has always been about: people. How they decide. How they trust. How they misunderstand each other. How they respond to rules, incentives, systems and stories.

Far from reining the pod in, perhaps I should be letting it lead.