Prospective Services
Practising attention in times of transition
Something is ending.Not just changing. Ending.This is a practice-place for people who already know that, and are trying to figure out what it means for their work, their organisations, and themselves.
Orientation
At first the path seems clear.The work is familiar: problems appear, effort is applied, new initiatives, better strategy, stronger processes. When something fails, you improve it. This is how responsible people inside organisations respond, and for a time it works but gradually the terrain shifts.Effort increases, yet the deeper problems remain. Meetings multiply, initiatives come and go, and it becomes harder to tell if anything is really moving. More planning, sharper interventions, the same ground worked more carefully and still something stays stuck. Then, often through a quiet conversation or a moment of recognition, another possibility surfaces.What if the ground itself is changing?In forests, there are seasons when familiar paths disappear. Old trees fall, light reaches the floor in new places, and what felt stable begins to loosen. Fallen trunks soften slowly into soil, fungi move quietly through the wood, and what once held the canopy begins to nourish what comes next. Some space opens and new growth appears in places no one would have predicted.Something similar happens inside institutions. Practices that once worked stop producing results, then structures start to strain. Then a realisation settles in, sometimes uncomfortable, though often accompanied by quiet relief. The difficulty may not be effort, in fact, the path itself may be ending. When that becomes visible, the work changes. Attention turns toward the patterns that keep repeating, the structures that are straining, and the practices that may have reached the end of their life. Some things need to loosen, others need to be composted and endings need to be named before something new can emerge.This work is for people who recognise that moment.Through the Zone of Attention Scan, The Art of Unravelling, and Endings Matter, the work here supports people to look honestly at the systems they are part of, not to rush toward solutions, but to see clearly what is ending, what remains alive, and what may be quietly beginning.People arrive here for different reasons. Sometimes something in their work no longer behaves the way it once did or the questions they are carrying have started to change. Either way, the experience tends to follow a similar shape. The old path fades, the forest opens slightly and for a moment you realise you are standing somewhere new, not lost, just in a clearing that wasn’t visible before.
Prospective Services is a practice-place for people navigating profound transition, individually, organisationally, and collectively.The work lives in three distinct fields, and you will find them in different places: some here on this site, some on Substack, and some at their own address. This website is the map, the place where it all connects and makes sense as a whole.If you are new here, start with the fields. Each one is distinct and each one is a genuine entry point into the work. If you are looking for something specific, whether that is writing, tools, artefacts, or a conversation, you will find signposts to all of it here.
Fields
If you are new here, start with the fields.Each one is distinct and each one is a genuine entry point into the work. If you are looking for something specific, whether that is writing, tools, artefacts, or a conversation, you will find a path into it here.
Zone of Attention
Before you can meet what's happening honestly, you have to see it clearly.This field holds the sensing practice: ethical, careful attention to what is actually present in the territory you're navigating.
The Art of Unravelling
Modernity is composting. That process is not a problem to be solved, it is a journey to be made.This field holds the seasonal, cyclical practice of letting go with care.
Endings Matter
Endings are real. They deserve honesty, ritual, and care not abandonment.This field holds the practice of meeting endings with integrity, in organisations, in communities, and in ourselves.This field is still forming. It will open when it is ready.
The Seed Bank
Here you will find tangible tools, practices, and scans to help you sense into systems. This is where the work becomes something you can hold in your hands and take into the world.
Zone of Attention ScansThese scans are designed to help you see more clearly what kind of situation you are in, before deciding what to do. They offer structured ways into complex issues, helping you notice the wider patterns, pressures, and tensions at play.
Seasonal PracticesThese practices emerged through The Art of Unravelling on Substack: a seasonal exploration of grief, kinship, emergence, and cultural transition. These practices help us sense what is shifting within us, between us, and in the relational field around us. They are gathered here in seasonal collections. Each season carries a different quality of attention and a different invitation. You don’t need to begin at the beginning. Simply enter the season that resonates with where you are.
The Season of UnravellingThese practices accompany moments when something is ending, whether personally, culturally, or collectively and invite us to meet grief with presence and dignity.
The Season of DriftingThese practices support the space after something has loosened but before the next shape becomes clear.Many of them explore how we stay in relationship even when direction disappears, learning to notice patterns forming between us rather than forcing certainty.
The Season of SeedingThese practices accompany the moment when new ideas, offerings, and directions begin to stir. They help create the conditions for what is emerging to take root without forcing it to grow too quickly.
The Season of ResonanceThese practices invite us to notice the tone of the systems we move through. Which situations amplify life, or maybe mute it and what might be gently re-tuned or returned to compost.
Lineage
This work is not created in a vacuum. It is grounded in years of practice and stands on the shoulders of established fields, including futures studies, death studies, grief literacy, and hospice logic.This page is a doorway to the intellectual roots of the practice.The full archive of foresight writing, academic publications, and podcast conversations lives on a dedicated Substack called Field Notes. It is an archive, not a newsletter, and is offered freely.
What is the Zone of Attention?
A Zone of Attention Scan maps what is actually present in the territory you are navigating. Rather than generic trends or static frameworks, a scan gives you a curated view of the live questions, tensions, and possibilities shaping your specific context right now.The scan draws on publicly available research, policy documents, Indigenous governance frameworks, practitioner reflections, and critical scholarship across multiple domains. It uses Causal Layered Analysis (a futures methodology developed by Sohail Inayatullah) to move from surface signals to deeper structures, worldviews, and myths.There are three ways to engage with the Zone of Attention work: the free scan summaries, buy the full scan or commission a tailored scan on the topic for your organisation.
The scan is informed by the Zone of Attention Scanning practice, which treats attention as an ecological resource and sensemaking as an ethical act. It refuses prediction, ranking, and premature closure. It makes power, harm, and grief visible as first-class dimensions of analysis.This diagram represents the heart of the practice: the seven movements of attention used to conduct a scan. Think of it as a focusing instrument. The movements deliberately shift your perspective: from the broad context to the fine detail, from past precedents to future implications, and from stated goals to unspoken dynamics.This structured process prevents premature conclusions and reveals the hidden patterns within a complex situation, allowing a clearer, more grounded understanding to emerge before any action is taken.All sources are cited and listed in the bibliography at the end of the document.This is not prescriptive work. It is a practice of attention, designed to help you see more clearly before deciding what to do.
Zone of Attention Scans
The Wellbeing Paradox
The Wellbeing Paradox examines the paradox at the heart of workplace wellbeing: more effort, more programs, and still more strain.A Zone of Attention scan is designed to surface the wider patterns, pressures, and tensions shaping it, and why those dynamics matter now.Start with the free summary scan, or go deeper with the full in-depth generic scan.The summary scan offers a concise map of how this issue is showing up across organisations, sectors, and public conversation. It helps you see beyond the obvious frame, notice what is driving the issue beneath the surface, and recognise the structural and strategic implications that are easy to miss when attention stays too narrow. (20 pages)
Full Scan — AUD$49
The full generic scan goes well beyond the summary, offering a more detailed and layered map of the issue, including the dominant narratives, deeper structural drivers, wider field conditions, and the tensions beneath easy fixes. It helps you see the territory more clearly, understand what is shaping it, and recognise what may be overlooked in current responses. Although it is not tailored to your organisation, it gives you a much stronger base for reflection, internal discussion, and more grounded decisions about what this issue is really asking of you. (71 pages)
Tailored scans
Sometimes a generic scan is not enough. If you are navigating something specific to your organisation, its history, its constraints, and its particular position within a live issue, a tailored scan can be written with your context explicitly in view.Tailored scans on an existing topic start at AUD $1,100.Bespoke scans on new topics are quoted separately.If you are interested in a tailored scan, please use the form below and I will come back to you within 3 business days.
Work with me
If you're navigating something complex and want a thinking partner, I offer Zone of Attention Scans and advisory work across organisational change, culture, and transformation.This work is finite, bounded, and conducted with care.
Melbourne, Australia
About
My work and writing sits at the intersection of foresight, organisational life, and cultural transition.For more than twenty years I have worked with leaders, learning communities, and institutions navigating periods of growth, strain, and change. My background spans leadership development, organisational culture, palliative care, and systems thinking. Each of these fields shares a common concern: how people make sense of complexity when the ground beneath them is shifting.My focus is now on helping individuals and organisations develop the capacity to pay attention well in times of uncertainty. Through practices such as Zone of Attention Scanning, I support you to notice emerging patterns, question inherited assumptions, and orient yourself to the unfolding conditions.Alongside this organisational work sits a deeper inquiry into endings, grief, and cultural transition. Through Endings Matter and The Art of Unravelling, I explore what it means to live through periods when familiar systems, identities, and narratives are coming to an end, and how these moments can be met with care rather than denial or premature solutions.Across these different strands runs a common thread. In times of profound change, I believe prediction becomes less useful than attention. Learning how to stay present to endings is often what allows genuine emergence to take place.My work draws on traditions of foresight, complexity theory, ecological thinking, and grief literacy, as well as the practical wisdom that comes from working closely with people at moments of transition.I live and work in Australia on the lands of the Wurundjeri people.