We’ve all heard it: “If you’re the smartest person in the room, find a new room.” There are two ways to respond. The Servant Learner Leave. Find a smarter room and keep learning. That’s valuable, but it’s largely a short-term strategy. You build relationships around what you can learn next, and your network can become …
Some people spend their lives keeping every bridge standing. They keep everyone happy, give everyone access, and make sure nobody is ever pushed away. Their island stays clean, but eventually there is nothing on it that is truly their own. Others burn every bridge. They push everyone away, trust no one, and end up standing …
We love to say, “Keep it simple.” But selective simplicity creates a problem. We allow the things we value most to become incredibly complex—because we believe they require expertise, nuance, and sophistication. Then we demand that everything around them be simple. That contradiction costs more than efficiency. It costs trust, integrity, and ultimately your brand. …
We celebrate too early. Hitting the goal feels like a win, but a result alone doesn’t prove that we actually learned anything. If the same mistakes show up the next time we try, then the first “win” was really just a temporary outcome. The real win comes when we achieve the next goal without repeating …
Solution evolution can be a good thing. We learn, adapt, and improve. But there is a point where evolution becomes substitution—each new solution simply solves the problems created by the previous one. The pattern becomes: Problem → solution → unintended problem → new solution → new unintended problem → repeat. Each step can look reasonable …
Read more “Solution Evolution can make many products Without Solving a single Problem.”
AI makes iteration incredibly easy. And that’s exactly the problem. If you start building before you understand what you actually need, AI will happily help you refine the wrong thing—faster, cheaper per iteration, and at massive scale. Understand the Problem First Before you ask AI to solve a problem, understand the problem first. What do …
Imagine a Monthly Business Review of Pearl Harbor. The presenter walks into the room with a confident smile. “Overall, a pretty successful month. Our team showed great resilience.” Ten air-to-air wins. Ten ground-to-air wins. Thousands of servicemen healthy and ready for deployment. A new reef system seeded in the harbor. Green checkmarks everywhere. Sounds pretty …
Read more “When Your MBR Can Only Report Wins, Goodhart’s Law Goes on Steroids”
Everyone wants the project delivered faster, cheaper, and with more features. The problem? The laws of project gravity still apply. The Iron Triangle—Scope, Time, and Cost—is one of the simplest ways to understand why projects go sideways. Change one side of the triangle and you put pressure on the other two. Want more scope? You …
While that vast majority of information technology strategy for internal back office capability’s enablement is taken from a Rolling Stones Song lyric “ you can’t get what you want you get what you need “ (paraphrased for effect) the reality is for technology and business teams alike the real question great architects should always ask …
Probability has little to do with possibility and vise versa. If it’s possible what ever “IT” is your time with “IT” is never miss spent or wasted. When you can take the possibility.