This about page explains all about the site, in terms of the past, the present and an unknown future.
About the Past
I started this site as a blog, back in 2011. At that time blogging was an innovation. In the early days it was a steep learning curve. You had to do some coding, which I didn’t really understand and still do not. I chose the woodlanddecay title, for two reasons.
Firstly, the site echoes my interest in the natural world, particularly the magic of forests and woodlands. Visiting woods was a magical experience as a child and thankfully it still is today. Over the lifetime of this site, my interest in nature religions (think shamanism/paganism) has grown. The strange site title has become more relevant (to me) with the passage of time.
Secondly, the title signposted my interest in the early days in organizational change and transformation. As a critical scholar, I was sceptical about the rhetoric of business as usual change and unprecedented change. However, the organic metaphor of woodland decaying made sense to me. Organizations appeared to go through incremental evolutions and I saw parallels with how woodlands evolve.
In the early days, I rarely posted anything, apart from the odd random nostalgic thought (for example). I became a university Reader in Organizational Change in 2013. I was increasingly publishing using traditional academic channels (books, chapters and journal papers). In parallel, this site became useful to post work in progress, share links to published work and “gently” provoke debate. Academic best practice seemed to favour excessive reviews. I appreciated having freedom on this site.
In 2019, I volunteered for redundancy, but continued with my academic writing for publication, stopping writing for publication around 2022. It’s odd, but past organizational change posts offer an ironic historical perspective on forward looking organizational change today.
About the Present
Today, woodlanddecay offers a site to share anything I want to share. I have always embraced a benign anarchic outlook. The site does not have a theme which would reflect best practice for a site. Instead, I am moving towards having a theme each year. In 2025, it was psychogeography and in 2026, it appears to be arts and crafts.
When I left academia I made a conscious decision to leave social media. I had used Twitter and LinkedIn, but I became disillusioned with such platforms. I know there are other platforms, but social media increasingly appears to me to be very problematic for individuals and societies. The downside of this is that social media offers the means to promote posts to the wider world. Thankfully, there is no need to chase readers, as I am not selling anything.
I have strangely enjoyed engaging with search engine optimisation (SEO). The results have been mixed, but I have enjoyed getting to know the web bots. I am enjoying learning how such processes work. If nothing else it provides a helpful work out for my aging brain.
About the future
What fascinated me about organizational change was the notion of moving from a known state into an unknown state. Commentators used to rhetorically claim that we were living through unprecedented change. It was fashionable and important to critique this, but it does feel like the current changes in organizations and societies are unprecedented.
I really don’t know how this site will evolve or if I will survive the next few years. My ego would like the site to live on after my demise. However, all that is certain, is that one day my decay will be complete and I will return to nature becoming part of the natural world.
Mark (Saltdean, 2026)