Pondering Tree
Pondering Tree makes tools for thinking about people, work and life. Blueprints for Leadership is a book series of visual blueprints you print large and draw on together. Build Better is a deck of coaching cards for friends, families and teams. Places, Please brings actor training to everyday life. Each one turns a hard conversation into something you can point at.
You can start for nothing: a free account opens a blueprint from every volume to draw on, on screen.
Great leadership can't make up for a poorly designed organisation. Each chapter gives you one blueprint (a theatre, a tribe, a harbour, a cathedral) and walks you through it as a hands-on workshop. Volume 1 is out now, Volume 2 arrives 4 January 2027, and Volumes 3 to 5 (AI, psychosocial safety and midlife) follow in early 2027.
Help one person get better at what matters most. Pick someone, work out what's really going on, sort the everyday behaviours that matter, pull the right lever and leave with one step said out loud. Five phases, about 50 minutes, for one to five coaches, with three Player's Guides: Start Better, Grow Better and Transition Better.
An actor's training for showing up in everyday life. The interview, the pitch, the meeting where you finally say the hard thing: thirteen cues that borrow the working tools of actor training, with film scenes and short scripted exercises you can run in your kitchen, your car or your next meeting.
The next Pondering Tree book is in the works. Create a free account and tick the monthly email to hear first when it's ready.
Read Chapter 1 of all five volumes free, including the three coming in early 2027, each with its blueprint ready to print, or to draw on screen with a free account. No card needed.
Prices in Australian dollars, GST included. The books are sold on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.
People don't announce their limits by buckling. They absorb, they cope, and then they quietly get worse. Here's how to spot it before something crowded happens.
Read it →
What you see depends on where you're sitting. A theatre, seven seats, and the one view you can never get on your own: the view of yourself.
Read it →
Before you hand any work to AI, answer the oldest question in management: what, exactly, is the work? A lesson from bank tellers and a carpenter's bench.
Read it →Every tool here works best with someone across the table. Here's how to find the conversation.
New Field Notes, blueprints and releases go to the Pondering Tree page on LinkedIn first. Comment, argue, add your story.
Follow on LinkedInCreate a free account and tick the email box. New chapters and Field Notes, nothing else, and unsubscribing never touches your account.
Create a free accountRunning Build Better or a blueprint with a team, a school or a club? Ask about bulk decks and a facilitated session.
Email ScottScott has worked in HR, organisational development and organisation design across a wide range of industries, most recently as Head of People and Culture at an Australian visual effects company. He studied commerce and filmmaking, and it shows: his tools borrow from cinema and story to make the structure of work visible.
He wrote the first volume of Blueprints for Leadership almost ten years ago and has rewritten it as a Third Edition. Volume 2 comes from six years inside a fast-growing creative business. Build Better is the hands-on companion: the same thinking, in cards anyone can pick up.
Pondering Tree Pty Ltd is based in Adelaide, South Australia. Get in touch at hello@ponderingtree.com.