How and why tools matter... youtube.com/watch?v=qcAH4x0e4XM&feature=youtu.be

"...people kept asking me what solutions I had in mind. I finally cracked, put my head down, turned off the filters, & just gave them what they asked for. Suddenly, that was “just what we needed.”" To me, that's a key reason why lots of ppl love the idea of PMs delivering vibe-coded prototypes.

The challenge with anything this nuanced is that some people lack the experience to understand it. For example, many people perceive product management’s role as running a functional feature factory, and nothing more. www.linkedin.com/pulse/functi...

TL; DR, if you keep tilting at windmills around empowerment, autonomy, being “problem first”, or any of these broad industry memes, you are probably missing (a big part of) the actual challenge and opportunity in your company. cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-391-yo...

Simple!

"I’ve had people swear up and down that governance framework X explicitly requires projects and programs, or that you can’t “do governance” using durable objects like capabilities, products, value streams, and so on. It just ain’t so." cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-390-go...

Reductionism can be wrong, but actionable. Complexity can be right, but paralyzing. cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-389-ov...

Some people are comfortable wading into the mess; other people, less so. Some people are fine dancing between the various lenses; for other people, they have a violent, knee-jerk reaction to anything “complicated”. cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-387-le...

When you have two words like Font and Ontology that share three letters, you naturally need to combine them. Behold the Fontology

Another quarter, another lil playbook docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Hosting a little chat on constraints, Shape Up, and artfully using constraints to help a team improve. Link at the top of this post: cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-386-un...

"Powers are not permanent. They counter downward pressure, but they require reinforcement to stay relevant. Even the strongest power loses leverage if the surrounding environment evolves faster than the company’s ability to adapt." cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-384-pr...

Many systems and complexity-informed thinkers become bogged down in selling complexity, uncertainty, systems thinking, and the like. Meanwhile, most people in an organization are looking for a solution and path forward, not a lecture about “the system”. cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-380-bu...

I thought the reply was a joke.... but I don't think it was.

I'll be doing a little show-and-tell / workshop on visualizing your company operating system (free). Would love to see folks. zoom.us/meeting/regi...

I'll be doing a little show-and-tell / workshop on visualizing your company operating system (free). Would love to see folks. zoom.us/meeting/regi...

"And the truth is, it's always about a buzzword. Whatever buzzword catches on becomes the obsession, and that's all people talk about for a couple of years until the next buzzword takes over and the cycle starts again." cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-376-wh...

My mom, a DC resident, is terrified. Childhood memories of growing up during the German occupation of Greece are hard memories to shake.

Mandate Levels Day 9/30 sharing my favorite doodles and drawings.

WIP it Real Good Day 8/30 sharing my favorite doodles and drawings.

Strategy is as much about when you do things as it is about what you do. Strategy is heavily concerned with timing and the impact of timing on leverage (urgency). cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-374-pr...

Should vs. Can Day 7/30 sharing my favorite doodles and drawings.

Just... Day 6/30 sharing my favorite doodles and drawings.

Do This. Not This. Or ... Day 5/30 sharing my favorite doodles and drawings.

The area between oversimplification and inaction Day 4/30 sharing my favorite doodles and drawings.

Journey to Product Teams Day 3/30 sharing my favorite doodles and drawings.

It is easy to nod along with the idea of less premature convergence, but in practice it often gets mistaken for waffling or an inability to be bold. The real skill is knowing when a decision truly needs to be made and when it should wait. cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-273-wh...

The Way of Ways Day 2/30 sharing my favorite doodles and drawings.

Trust Day 1/30 sharing my favorite doodles and drawings.

For the scale-up, the highest leverage thing you can do is to figure out a model for linking these new product-forward ways of working to your current business challenge, and essentially a new “model” for investment. cutlefish.substack.com/p/two-pom-tr...

Where are the areas of overlap in what they want, even if the language they use makes them sound opposed? cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-272-th...

Many companies end up losing because they stubbornly hold on to a view of their context, their game, and their "old" way of aligning from 5-10 years ago. cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-271-di...

Visualizing dependencies is not enough. Instead, you need a visualization that shows each team’s competing priorities, highlights the value gap between those priorities, and measures the drag caused by multitasking. cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-370-de...

"Most 'source of truth' problems in product development aren't really about the source of truth at all. They assume that everyone wants the truth, that they can agree on what truth they're seeking, and that they're willing to put in the work to forge coherence" cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-369-so...

Hard things take practice. Do we expect to get good at something by practicing it once a quarter? cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-368-go...

Forget vibe coding. Enter vibe leadership.

Funny how we force engineers to write ADRs for every trade‑off, yet billion‑dollar strategic bets live in hallway whispers and fluffy slide decks. What if we treated business decisions like architecture? Context, options, trade‑offs, metrics, all in a repo, version‑controlled and reviewed?

If a leadership team is unwilling to sit with reality and explore what is happening, or creates an environment that is unfriendly or unsafe to do so, then you will never "get clear." cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-367-th...

But when it comes to feedback, concerns, "pulling the andon cord", or questioning the current strategy, front-line team members are expected to route everything up the official chain. Boundary-spanning is great for delivery, but not for dissent. cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-366-em...

"Teams are being asked to jump headfirst into AI efforts, innovate, and respond to a generational shift in the technology landscape. It is like asking a race car driver to drive the race of their life while in fuel-efficiency mode." www.dotwork.com/post/thrivin...

Official Narrative: “We are a PLG company now.” Sales Reality: “We still make our number through sales-led enterprise deals. PLG is a distraction.” Product Reality: “We’re building self-serve features but don’t control pricing, packaging, or onboarding.” www.dotwork.com/post/how-ope...

A critique of a recent Cagan post that I think deserves some counterpoint. cutlefish.substack.com/p/a-cagan-cr...

The product advice landscape has gotten to the point where you need battle second order gaslighting ... basically defending yourself against the peddlers offering you ways to defend yourself (while make you feel shitty about yourself)

An initiative is an initiative...right? www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOFa...

Whatever it is .... it is sad.

I was reflecting recently on how stark the differences between teams can be and how often you can pick up on those differences within seconds. You can feel it. The words they use are different. The way they describe their work tells you almost everything. cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-364-th...

Juggling this dichotomy is a huge challenge right now for managers/leaders, etc. www.dotwork.com/post/thrivin...

The heroic change narrative narrative is one of many... helpful, but incomplete.

After a couple years in stealth model working with amazing design partners/launch partners, we're "open for business". It is a blast (and scary as hell) to be back in a product role, and heading it up to boot. www.dotwork.com

Is there objectively such a thing as low-hanging fruit? In Matt's mind, everything could be more effective if leadership could "just." But maybe that is an illusion. Maybe the ppl with more power in the org are getting exactly what they need and want. cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-363-is...