Jon WhitbySay hello

Curious by nature.
Builder by habit.

I started in design. Ended up leading marketing. Somewhere along the way I realised I wasn’t really changing careers.

I was still trying to answer the same question:

How do we make complicated things feel simpler?

Explore the notebookRead my story
ideas rarely stay in neat little boxes

What I’m curious about

The same questions keep showing up in different clothes. People, growth, systems, building and the slightly unreasonable belief that there is probably a clearer way.

Understanding people

How people think, make decisions and experience the world around them.

Growing organisations

Helping organisations learn, adapt and grow through better decisions.

Systems & AI

Removing friction through thoughtful systems, automation and AI.

Building useful things

Turning ideas into small experiments, tools and software.

Continuous learning

Questions usually interest me more than answers.

Explore

Each page is a different doorway into the same workbench. Some are tidier than others. A fairly accurate description of most workbenches.

Notebook

Essays, notes and observations I’m still figuring out.

Playground

Experiments, prototypes and tiny tools built to solve real problems.

Work

How my thinking has evolved across design, marketing, leadership and AI.

Journey

The places that shaped both my career and my perspective.

About

The person behind the ideas.

Right now

A small, changeable list of things currently occupying more headspace than originally budgeted for.

Currently exploring

AI-native marketing teamsWhat changes when people, systems and agents share the work?Curious BadgerA small attempt to make websites legible to people, search engines and language models.Websites for humans and language modelsStructure, usefulness and the oddity of writing for readers you cannot see.Better operating systems for organisationsFewer rituals, clearer decisions and kinder momentum.Writing publiclyA quiet attempt to make the thinking visible before it is perfectly formed.

Recent thinking

The latest notes from the notebook. Some are polished. Some are still wearing their scaffolding.

Systems & automationDon't automate bad processesAutomation can make work faster, but it can also make bad work happen faster. Before automating anything, ask whether the process should exist at all.Technology & AIAI removes friction, not thinkingAI is useful when it removes the repetitive work that slows people down. It becomes dangerous when we expect it to replace context, judgement and human understanding.Data & decisionsThe best metrics answer today's question and reveal tomorrow'sMetrics should answer the question they were chosen to answer, but they should also create the next layer of investigation. The best metrics reduce uncertainty without pretending the work is finished.
See more thinking

Recent experiments

Small prototypes, tools and ideas built to test a question in public.

Metric monitoringDashboard WatchdogMonitors dashboards and key metrics for meaningful changes, then explains what may have shifted and where to look next.IdeaPerformance analysisMarketing Performance AgentReviews Meta, Google Ads, GA4 and Search Console performance to surface anomalies, trends and possible causes.In progressPerformance toolingImage Compression StudioCompresses and optimises images for faster websites, better performance and lower bandwidth usage.Live
Visit the playground

If something here resonates, or you’d simply like to chat about growth, AI, design or building better organisations, I’d love to hear from you.

The best conversations usually start with curiosity.

Say hello