I'm James Marwood. I've spent the last 25-odd years as a management consultant — working inside large organisations, as a freelancer, and currently as Head of Transformation at BetterGov, a boutique public sector consultancy I'm genuinely proud to be part of. I'm based in the North-East of England, which suits me very well.
This site is where I think out loud about work, learning, and the kind of quiet professionalism I've come to believe matters more than almost anything else in a long career.
Why "Speaking Softly"?
I've worked alongside some remarkable people over the years. The ones who made the biggest impact were rarely the loudest in the room. They were the ones who'd done the work — built real expertise, developed genuine judgement — and didn't need to announce it. Teddy Roosevelt called this the Big Stick Ideology: if you carry the stick of real competence, you can afford to speak softly. That's the standard I hold myself to, with varying degrees of success.
Other things I am
- A keen martial artist, when time permits, training in MMA, boxing and Bartitsu. I have a long-standing interest in historical European martial arts and maintain an archive of resources here.
- A Freemason.
- Someone with a history of depression and anxiety, who wasted too long before getting help, and who has since found Stoicism to be genuinely useful rather than merely interesting.
- An unashamed geek — tabletop RPGs, tech, gaming, cooking — and a recovering iGent.
- Occasionally on television, for reasons that don't always bear close examination.
Get in touch
You can find me on LinkedIn or reach me at hello@speakingsoftly.com. I do get a reasonable volume of email and can't always reply promptly, but I read everything.