The Toast Series

A mini series about work, systems, and the invisible chaos underneath your meetings

Let’s start with toast.
Everyone knows how to make it.
Everyone’s done it.
It’s simple. Obvious. No one ever argues about toast.

Until... you ask ten people to draw how it’s made.
Suddenly it’s not a process. It’s a psychology experiment.

• One person draws a toaster.
• One draws a person.
• One draws a diagram involving supply chains, emotional sabotage, and “step 4: feedback loop.”

Congratulations.
You’ve just run a meeting.

Why This Exists

This series started as a joke (again).
Now it’s a diagnostic tool disguised as breakfast.

It’s about what happens when you think you’re aligned, but you’re not.
When you say “toast,” but they hear “air fryer.”
When the project plan looks great, but somehow no one knows who’s pressing the lever.

The real problem at work isn’t tools.
It’s unspoken mental models.
Everyone’s using a different map, and no one wants to admit it.

This series is a slightly ridiculous way to fix that.

What’s in the Series

1. How to Make Toast
   The one that started it. Projects, people, and why your good plan collapsed by lunchtime.
2. Why Alignment Is a Lie
   “Let’s get aligned” sounds useful. But no one actually knows what it means.
3. The Toast Archetypes
   Eight ways people sabotage (or save) projects, based entirely on how they approach bread.
4. How to Build a Shared Model
   Not a framework. Just a napkin and a sharp pencil. And maybe someone brave enough to ask dumb questions early.
5. The Toast Audit
   A diagnostic exercise you can use with your team tomorrow. It works. It’s weird. And it involves bread.
6. Legacy Systems and Burnt Edges
   What happens when the system is broken, but it’s the only one you’ve got.

Extras

• You Think You’re Building a Cathedral, But You’re Just Laying Bricks
  A quiet sermon on effort, illusion, and the unbearable blandness of Wednesdays.

Who This Is For

• Leaders quietly losing their mind
• People in charge of too many vague deliverables
• Teams who keep asking “What are we actually doing?” but in a polite tone

If you’ve ever sat in a project meeting and thought,
“we’re not actually talking about the same thing, are we?” — this series is for you.

Read the Rest

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Acknowledgement

The toast series was inspired by Tom Wujec’s Draw Toast workshop — a brilliant tool for teaching systems thinking.
What you’re reading here is what happens when that idea gets passed through a leadership lens, a few years of meetings, and a stickman filter.