I’m a dairy farmer. I develop applications. I study business administration, and I have been involved in various public and community institutions.
Those fields may seem far apart. Yet they constantly bring me back to the same questions.
How do we make decisions? Why do some ideas work on paper but fail in practice? How does an organization drift away from its mission? Why do we sometimes keep doing things a certain way simply because that is how they have always been done?
What interests me, ultimately, is not only the subjects themselves. It is human systems: how they work, where they contradict themselves and what happens when an idea meets reality.
Understand before reaching a conclusion
We are constantly pushed to react quickly. News, social media and political debate reward firm positions, simple explanations and slogans that are easy to share.
Reality is rarely that tidy.
A public policy can begin with a reasonable intention and produce unexpected effects. An impressive technology can be useless under the real conditions in which it has to operate. A company can offer an excellent product and still fail to reach its customers. An organization can make decisions that seem perfectly logical from its own perspective but absurd to the people who have to carry them out.
I write to move beyond the first reaction, examine the mechanisms at work and try to understand what is actually happening.
A perspective from the field
My starting point is often agriculture because that is the world I work in every day.
On a farm, ideas are quickly tested against reality. A decision has to account for animals, buildings, available time, finances, regulations and a constant stream of unexpected events. A solution that ignores those constraints is not really a solution.
That experience also shapes the way I look at technology, management, education and public decisions. I am less interested in what should work in theory than in what actually works, for whom and under what conditions.
What you’ll find here
This site is neither a personal diary nor a blog devoted to a single subject. It is not an activist space either, even though I may clearly defend a position when I believe the evidence supports it.
I publish, among other things:
- news roundups and analysis on agriculture;
- reflections on management, institutions and public policy;
- articles on technology and artificial intelligence;
- observations drawn from my projects, studies and experience.
The subjects vary, but the approach remains the same: question what seems obvious, look for the links between decisions and their consequences, and explain it all as clearly as possible.
No artificial neutrality
I do not write from nowhere. My experience, values and opinions inevitably influence the way I see things.
So I do not claim absolute neutrality. Instead, I try to be honest in my reasoning, distinguish facts from my interpretations and change my position when the facts no longer support it.
You may disagree with me. Disagreement does not bother me when it helps move the discussion beyond slogans.
If you enjoy understanding how ideas, decisions and systems hold up when tested against reality, you should find plenty here to think about.