About Alexia
None of this was the plan.
For the first half of my career I worked in marketing and business. Brands, products, markets, positioning, launches, growth. I became a business unit director, was involved in a management buyout, raised money and spent a lot of time taking complicated commercial situations apart to work out what was really going on.
Then, in 2009, I fell pregnant. In doing so realised that I was terrified of giving birth.
Fear
That sent me somewhere else entirely.
I had tokophobia. I developed something that helped me change the fear, and instead of simply being pleased about that and getting on with my life, I wanted to know why it had worked.
Other women wanted to know too. That became Fear Free Childbirth.
Then I started using the same underlying change work outside birth. That became Head Trash.
And because apparently I can’t leave a useful question alone, I eventually ran into another one.
How do I know whether any of this is actually working?
Measurement
So I started measuring.
At first, quietly behind the scenes. Spreadsheets. Before and after. Looking at what people said had changed and trying to see whether I could capture something more structured.
That line of enquiry eventually became the Ladder of Growth and the wider measurement work I’m building now.
Same brain
Same brain. Different object.
The funny thing is that I don’t think I changed careers as dramatically as it looks from the outside. I still do much the same thing I did in business.
I look for the structure. I ask what we’re actually looking at. I separate things that have been accidentally bundled together. I look for the common strand, the hidden assumption, the bit doing more work than anyone realised.
Sometimes the object is a human. Sometimes it’s a business. Sometimes it’s a body of ideas.
Still asking
And I’m still asking the same bloody question.
Is it actually working?