This Is Not The Work: Culture Begins Where Control Ends
- Roy Sharples
- Jun 17
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 19
The plan was never the point.
There is no clean start.
Only noise.
Flicker.
Contradiction pressing against the frame until the frame cracks.
This is the space after the briefing but before the excuse.
Where nothing is ready and everything is possible.
Where no one is watching but everything watches back.
You are here now.
Which means the real work can begin.
Friction is the Material
Culture doesn’t emerge from alignment.
It erupts from tension.
Where people stop agreeing and start creating.
Where the story can’t be told in full sentences yet.
This is where the friction lives.
In missed cues.
In clashing palettes.
In the uncomfortable silence that follows the honest idea.
If it feels smooth, it’s already dead.
Friction is the texture of becoming.
Risk is the Engine
Real risk is not spectacular.
It’s not heroic.
It’s a quiet disobedience.
A decision not to explain yourself.
A gesture made before it makes sense.
It costs you something.
Sometimes clarity.
Sometimes belonging.
But what you get back is momentum.
Not forward. Not up.
Just out.
Out of the loop.
Out of the algorithm.
Out of the predictable repetition of the last good thing.
Rules are Temporary Structures
Most rules were written to keep things still.
Still is useful for storage.
But this is movement.
This is something growing sideways.
Rules are scaffolding. Use them.
Then unbolt them one by one until what remains is only the necessary.
Do not be precious.
Do not wait for permission to interrupt the sequence.
Interrupt it anyway.
What works now might not work again.
That’s not failure. That’s the rhythm.
Culture is What Leaks
Culture doesn’t announce itself.
It slips through.
In the margins of the document.
In what people do when no one is counting.
In the decisions made without strategy decks.
Culture is not a performance.
It’s not a brand voice.
It is the residue of intent.
The pattern behind the noise.
The signal you didn’t mean to send
but kept sending anyway.
Let it misbehave.
Let it breathe.
Do not try to own what does not want to be held.
Make the Thing That Alters You
Nothing worth making leaves you untouched.
It stains.
It bends the shape of your thinking.
It pulls you toward something you can’t yet articulate
but can no longer ignore.
Make with your hands.
Make with your teeth if you must.
Make until the work looks back at you and asks
if you’re still willing to follow it where it’s going.
No applause.
No polish.
Only presence.
Only risk.
Only the hum of something just about to make sense.
This is not the conclusion.
This is not a call to action.
This is a threshold.
Step in.
Mess intact.
Voice cracked open.
No map.
No script.
From chaos.
With friction.
Through rupture.
Toward whatever dares to happen next.
Read the Book. Stoke the Fire.
by Roy Sharples
How to make the invisible visible by lighting the way into the future.
Founder of Unknown Origins.
Champion of originality in an age of imitation.
Attitude. Imagination. Execution.
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