Everything, organized by how you read.
The Database Test for AI Strategy
When AI shows up as a pillar in a strategy diagram, ask whether the rest of the diagram could function without it. If not, you do not have a pillar. You have a substrate, and substrates do not go in the pillar row.
A Great Design Gathering
Seven ideas, six quotes, and one book recommendation from sixty design leaders in a SoMa space under the Chatham House Rule. The most useful frame: AI does not automate design, it exposes what design was actually responsible for in the first place.
The Power Share Paradigm: Function, Form, Scale
Non-designers are doing design work, and gatekeeping does not work in 2026. The job is to teach, in a specific order: function first, form second, scale third. What gets shared is the access. What gets kept is the bar.
Tying Infrastructure to Churn
Stop pitching infrastructure investment as revenue acceleration. Start pitching its absence as churn. The math is more honest, and the conversation moves from speed to durability, where design leaders tend to do better.
Saying No When You Can't Stop
There are three kinds of darling worth killing: feature, process, and personal. The discipline of stopping is harder than starting, and it is the rate-limiting skill in any craft-led practice.
The Vibe Tribe is a Job Now
The people building things outside the official roadmap are usually quiet, easy to miss, and producing the work that will redefine the practice in eighteen months. Curating them is a real leadership job in 2026.
Designing the Bridge Role in Two Phases
We are hiring a design technologist. But we are not hiring the version of the role we eventually want. We are hiring the version the team is ready for, in a deliberate first phase, with a second phase already scoped.
Lovely Poetry and Lots of Exciting Things
Two tech leaders on my team opened an org-wide planning presentation this week by promising we were about to get "lovely poetry and lots of exciting things." They were not being metaphorical.
The Shelf Behind the Keynote
The three non-design competencies I talk about most when people ask how to prepare for design leadership, and what I recommend for each.
When Disabled Is the Wrong Signal
A designer brought a promo-activation flow to crit this week. The team had reached for a disabled checkbox to handle a pending state. It was almost right, and almost right is usually the most interesting place to start a crit.
Leverage as a Leadership Posture
When a CEO asks for leverage in a compression quarter, the word is doing more work than it appears to. Most leaders read it wrong. Here is the generative version, the four questions that distinguish it from the extractive one, and why the posture is also the retention story.
The Feedback That Stopped
When a teammate goes silent, it is rarely maturity. It is almost always withdrawal. Here is what that looks like, why it is more dangerous than open conflict, and the bounded repair that got two designers back in a room with each other.
When the Launch Is Real and the Team Is Thin
The hardest part of a big launch is not the product work. It is holding the cross-functional orchestration layer together when the people assigned to it are missing, overloaded, or not senior enough for the scope.