Let’s say there’s a product team that has shipped a successful product. It’s a bit janky, but customers love it, and they’re constantly adding new features to it with a speed that delights their users. Quinn recently joined the team from a big company. She’s aghast at how janky the…

I wanted to talk about something I’ve quietly struggled with over the years. It made me feel amazing in the moment, but over time it sent me into a tailspin that led to hurting myself and others. I know that many others struggle with the same thing. …

A story for its own sake — This story is not directly about product management or strategy. It doesn’t end with an unpacking of a metaphor or propose any applications to business. If you’re expecting this story to end with an explicit takeaway you will be disappointed. …

A pattern for cultivating positive exposure to miracles — Gardening Platforms explains the reason why taking a horizontal approach to building products and platforms can unlock miraculous outcomes with minimal risk. The downside is that the tactics are often highly counterintuitive and can seem almost backwards. This post builds up a fanciful (and slightly silly) parable to help build…

Tapping into the emergent undercurrents of coordination — The Coordination Headwind (AKA why organizations are like slime molds, AKA that deck with all of the 🧫🕸🏆) tells the story of how even in the best organizations — with individuals who are good at what they do, hard-working, and collaborative — situations still arise where it’s nearly impossible to…

An incremental way to share developing nuggets of insight — This post is the second part of a two-part story behind https://thecompendium.cards. The first post covers the underlying motivation and journey to this new format, and this post covers a more practical guide to how to consume and interact with the webapp and its companion twitter bot (@CardsCompendium). https://thecompendium.cards is…

Evolving a bespoke medium for developing nuggets of insight — This post is part one of a two-part story about https://thecompendium.cards . This post covers the long-winded motivation and journey to the concept, whereas How to use thecompendium.cards covers a more practical guide on how best to engage with it. The power of thinking by talking I seek out as much interesting information as I can…

Author’s note I originally wrote this essay, in almost its precise current form, in an intense burst in December of 2017. I didn’t publish it at the time because it was too far removed from the types of Product Management-related essays I normally post here, and because the conclusion was…

Harnessing the Power of Individuals, Teams, and Ecosystems — The self-sustaining flame is a way to think about the properties of intrinsic self-reinforcing forces within ecosystems. But what is that force? It turns out that the engine at the core of ecosystems helps us understand the engines at the core of all human-scale systems: individuals, teams, and ecosystems. …