Nothing Worth Building Arrives Fully Finished

Most of us spend a fair amount of our lives trying to look as though we know exactly what we are doing.

The truth is usually rather messier.

Lives change. Businesses go wrong. Plans unravel. Certainties prove temporary. Sometimes we choose to begin again. Sometimes life makes the decision for us.

I created The Rough Drafts as a place to explore what happens next.

It draws on more than forty years of leading businesses, teams and difficult projects in the UK and overseas; some successful, some troubled, and some that taught me considerably more than I wanted to learn at the time.

I am not interested in miracle cures or fashionable certainty. Some problems do have quick fixes. Many do not. When they do not, the work is to understand what happened, accept what cannot be changed, take responsibility for what can, and build something better from what remains.

The Rough Drafts is where I share honest reflections, practical field guides and hard-won lessons about resilience, leadership, ageing, purpose, personal responsibility and continuing to grow when it would be easier to settle.

I do not claim to have all the answers.

But I have lived long enough to have better questions.

A Little About Me

I’m John Gillespie.

For more than forty years, I have led businesses, teams and complex projects in the UK and overseas. Some went well. Some went badly. Most taught me more than the tidy success stories ever could.

Alongside business, I have continued to explore leadership, resilience, ageing, health, purpose, consciousness and what helps people keep moving when life changes direction.

The Rough Drafts is where those strands come together; not as a collection of final answers, but as working notes from someone who is still testing, questioning and learning.

Still Working It Out?

Good. You are in the right place.