For more than thirty years I have been interested in a simple question:

How do we recognise value?

In every sector I've worked with, whether public, private or community, I've encountered the same tension. Organisations begin with a clear sense of purpose, but as they grow, the pressure to remain commercially viable can push that purpose to the margins.

Profit matters.

Costs matter.

Productivity matters.

But so do confidence, belonging, resilience, dignity and community. These are often the outcomes people value most, yet they remain largely invisible within conventional economic systems.

For much of my career, I believed the answer lay in developing better measurement. To a degree, it did. Good measurement brings discipline, supports better decisions and provides evidence for funders and boards.

But over time I became increasingly aware of its limitations.

Not everything that matters can be measured credibly.

During a career spent studying how systems fail people, a simple reality emerged, spreadsheets don't bleed. When we force a number onto something that cannot genuinely be quantified, we replace insight with fiction.

That led me to a principle that now underpins all my work:

Measure what can be captured credibly. Show what can't.

Today, through Joy Margin, I combine economic modelling with documentary storytelling. The numbers help us understand measurable impact. The films help us understand the human reality behind those numbers. Together they provide a fuller picture of value.

As someone who is proudly neurodivergent, I've always been drawn to patterns. Numbers have been part of that journey, but they've never been the destination. What interests me is the relationship between systems and people, between data and lived experience, and between what is measured and what is real.

This website is where I explore those ideas.

Some articles focus on economics, social value and impact measurement. Others explore the wider relationship between work, communities and human wellbeing. All are driven by the same belief:

The purpose of measurement is not to create better numbers. It is to better understand what matters.