From the Field
Weekly notes for managers stuck in the Vise, teams tired of mistaking motion for progress, and anyone who’s sat through a meeting wondering where the energy in the room just went.
How to keep your transformation from stalling…
TLDR: We all want our product teams to be Effective, Efficient, and Engaged. But how do we keep our agile transformations from stalling out in the first place? Today, we take a proactive look at how…
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Volition Isn’t a Trait. It’s a Condition.
TLDR: Brooks is right that volition is the new edge in the AI age. He’s wrong that it’s a personal trait. It’s a leadership condition, which means it’s your job. Remember when AI was going to…
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Tomorrow’s illiterate…will be the man who has not learned how to learn.
“Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the man who can’t read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.” — Herbert Gerjuoy, quoted by Alvin Toffler in Future Shock Gerjuoy said that in 1970, decades…
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Why “We’ve Never Done This Before” is the Ultimate Growth Killer
TLDR; Blindly following legacy rules kills curiosity and stalls innovation. When we defend processes without understanding why they exist, we turn our experts into disengaged box-checkers. This week, we dive into the famous “Five Monkeys Experiment”…
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Are Your Quiet Rock Stars Feeling Invisible?
TLDR; When team members feel forced to “toot their own horn” just to be noticed, psychological safety plummets and corporate theater takes over. If you are noticing an epidemic of “CC everyone,” public channel performances, or…
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Catching the Shrapnel: The Art of Saying “Not Right Now”
Then, two days into the iteration, the shrapnel starts flying from three different directions at once: In an instant, your team’s precious focus is shattered. The “Middle Manager’s Vise” Reopened I’ve talked before about how Scope…
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From Jira Jockey to Value Creation Mastermind
TLDR; The backlog shouldn’t be a list of chores. Move from being a “Jira Jockey” to a Value Mastermind by writing hypotheses instead of recipes. If the entire squad owns the outcome, not just the output,…
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Outcomes Over Output: Is Your “Done” Column Actually Delivering?
Outcomes Over Output: Is Your “Done” Column Actually Delivering? TLDR; Shipping a feature is just the start of the value cycle, not the end. If we want to move from being “doers of work” to solvers…
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You’re Getting Faster. Is Your Team Getting Lonelier?
TLDR; Shifting your team from “doers” to “directors” is the right move — but it comes with a hidden cost nobody is talking about: the social fabric of your team is quietly fraying. New research confirms that…
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Are you Sprinting, or just Running?
Are You “Sprinting” Or Just “Running?” TLDR: A Sprint without a Goal isn’t a Sprint — it’s just a random collection of tasks. If you want a team that’s focused, empowered, and actually delivering value (instead…
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