When things don't always go as expected
Strategy360 — Issue 3, May 2026. Broken hands, flopped posts, and why authenticity is harder than it looks.
Welcome back. If you’re new here — glad you found your way in. This newsletter is where I think out loud about strategy, content, and all the messy in-between.
This month has been, let’s say, unexpected. I broke my hand. A post I’m genuinely proud of was a complete flop. And somewhere in the wreckage of both, I found some things worth sharing.
Let’s get into it.
The image I wish I had for my PhD defence 18 years ago
A few weeks ago, I broke my hand. I had to wait 40 years to break my first bone ever!
I’ll spare you the elaborate story — because there is none: I missed a step. No dog pulling me (he was off lead, so that excuse was off the table anyway) and I did not slip. I just miscalculated a step, my hand took the landing, and here we are.
What surprised me wasn’t the injury. It was how much people — including myself, for a split second — wanted there to be a reason explaining why this had happened. We’re wired to reach for an explanation that softens the edges of a mistake, something that says “this happened to me” rather than “I simply got it wrong.”
But I didn’t get it wrong in some catastrophic, meaningful way. I missed a step. The consequence is real: I’m taking it easier, being patient and letting my hand heal. This resulted in writing and publishing less, and that’s ok.
On the bright side? The scientist and (former) imaging expert in me got to look at some nice images of a fracture, and I thought: “I wish I’d had that image when I defended my PhD thesis” — lol.
Why? Because I actually opened my PhD defence with the very first X-ray photograph ever taken of a human hand: on 22 December 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen asked his wife, Anna Bertha Ludwig, to hold her left hand over a photographic plate while he beamed his newly discovered X-rays at it. The resulting image — Hand mit Ringen (Hand with Rings) — shows the ghostly outline of her finger bones and wedding ring with startling clarity. Having my own hand X-ray in there would have been a great way to create “authentic content”, don’t you think?
How do you find your way back to yourself in such a noisy world?
This was, by every metric, my biggest flop.
I posted it on Easter Sunday, which, yes, wasn’t ideal timing. I reposted twice. The second time, I added a slightly more “thought leadership” angle, thinking maybe I just hadn’t framed it right. Still nothing. Fewer than 1,000 impressions across all versions combined.
I wrote that post entirely by hand. No structural help from AI — not even redundancy checks or a prompt to improve flow. Just my voice and what I was feeling at that time.
Here’s what I’ve been sitting with since: people say they want authenticity. And I think they mean it. But authenticity that doesn’t perform the right signals — the sharp hook, the bold opener, the three-part framework — seems to slip through the algorithm like water through a sieve. It doesn’t get seen, which means it doesn’t get felt.
I don’t think the answer is to stop writing that way. I think the question worth asking is: what does it mean when a genuine connection requires a performance to be found? And is there a way to be both — findable and real?
I don’t have a clean answer. But I’m thinking about it. And you know what? I truly enjoyed writing it — and I will continue to write that way from time to time. It feels really good to write for ourselves and let go.
In case you’re curious to read the original post, you can find it here.
AI is trained on average — and what to do about it
A few weeks ago I published a reflection on something that’s been quietly bothering me about AI-generated content: it’s trained on the average content available [2]. Which means, if you’re using AI without intention, you’re optimising for mediocrity.
If you missed it, you can read the full piece here.
The good news is there are concrete ways to work with AI while protecting what makes your voice yours. Which brings me to the thing I’m most excited to share this month.
The D-R-A-F-T framework
This is the practical answer to the “trained on average” problem — a workflow I’ve been developing to help you use AI while keeping your authentic voice. Not to replace you, but to augment you. Your voice, Your expertise — this is your unique selling point.
D-R-A-F-T is a sequence that keeps your own perspective at the centre of the process, rather than letting the model smooth it into something generic. I’ll walk you through each step in detail in the full article here.
What’s next
Once my hand cooperates, I’m hoping to get back to a regular publishing rhythm. Here’s what’s in the pipeline:
More on the DRAFT framework — I want to go deeper on each step with real examples, because the concept is only useful if it’s practical
The first article in my “beyond keywords” series — this one has been sitting in draft for longer than I’d like, but it’s almost ready
More reflections on E-E-A-T and technical authority — specifically, how subject matter experts can build genuine credibility in a world where everyone is publishing content about everything
If any of those land for you, hit reply and let me know. I read every message, even when it takes me longer than usual to respond (broken hand, see above).
See you next month.
— Tiff.
P.S. If you know a scientist, researcher, or technical professional who could use some strategic guidance on their digital presence, forward this their way. Strategy360 is free, and it’s built for them.
You're the second person I hear speaking about the EEAT framework. Someone ran an audit of my profile with that. And I noticed some issues with the framework applied to LinkedIn analysis. Definitely something to write about