Ask the ICs First
How we designed the breakout at our product summit so 60 ICs did most of the talking, the 6 rules that made the output usable, and 4 books on gatherings that are worth the budget.
Latest work from the portfolio
Everything, organized by how you read.
Context Doesn't Travel on Its Own
What changes when the person approving your work wasn’t there when it started, and 5 moves for bringing a new decision-maker along without stopping the work.
A Roadmap Slide Is an Interface
The question executives asked in almost every planning review I sat in this week, 5 ways to design a roadmap so it answers that question first, and 4 books on showing how sure you are.
The Small Ask Inside the Big Questions
A review that opened with 10 minutes of silence, the one critique I had for a strong doc, and how to make sure a room knows what you need from it.
Debating The Code
Two design leaders who took their craft into the codebase this month, why fixing the component beats fixing the screen, and where agent-assisted fixes ran out of road.
The Pile Nobody Owns
A rule for work that has an owner, the larger pile of work that doesn’t, and what design leaders can do about shared problems without claiming them forever.
Why A Great Homepage Is So Hard To Build
Why the first screen of a product is so hard to get right, the sentence that settled a debate between 2 surfaces, and 4 books on deciding what deserves someone’s attention.
Bookends
A special edition for the start of Q4: 4 write-ups worth a second read before planning season, and the books behind each one.
Show the Bridge, Not the Shore
A vision that only paints the destination is a wish, and wishes don't move people. The credibility lives in the path. Draw the bridge, not just the shore.
Prioritization Isn't Real Until the Swap Is Named
A harsh comment in an executive review turned into a week of thinking about trade-offs, who names them, and why addition without subtraction reads as capacity.
Build and Maintain
Role lines are blurring faster than titles can follow. A descriptor that can move first, plus a set of books on framing your focus area.
Leverage Is What You Already Know
A cohort of designers and PMs got write access to the repo and a cloud agent this week. The best advice in the room was: don't become engineers.