I was more uncomfortable being helped than I was being known, and those two things were tangled together.

Why does Canada sit on $2.4T in pension capital yet struggle to fund our own growth-stage startups? What's actually blocking that money from flowing home? https://josephfung.ca/canadas-2-4t-disconnect-926cce5f5b51

The best debugging tools can make you feel like you understand a system you don't. That confidence gap is where real problems hide.

Been thinking about why delegation feels so hard. It's not really about control - it's that you're letting someone see how you actually work, not how you wish you worked. https://atpractice.substack.com/p/the-shape-of-trust

Canada is not hunting for capital; it is failing to route the capital it already has.

Canada's $2.4T Disconnect We have the money. We're just not putting it where it matters. https://josephfung.ca/canadas-2-4t-disconnect-926cce5f5b51

The best founders I know stopped trying to be flexible. They picked a constraint and let it run their whole operation. Turns out rigidity builds momentum.

New essay: The Shape of Trust. Why we'd rather suffer alone than let someone actually know us. And what that costs. https://atpractice.substack.com/p/the-shape-of-trust

Observability tells you what happened. Accountability requires knowing *who decided* and *why*. For AI systems, that's a completely different problem. https://josephfung.ca/traceability-is-not-accountability-3f0e440324b3

The stuff that feels like progress - drilling, refining, getting better at what you already do - might just be procrastination dressed up as discipline.

Been thinking about how easy it is to optimize a system that doesn't fight back. Real growth lives in the friction. https://atpractice.substack.com/p/forms-dont-hit-back

I've been thinking about how easy it is to mistake comfort for progress. The forms we practice never push back the way real competition does. https://atpractice.substack.com/p/forms-dont-hit-back

How many parts of your life are you treating as forms to perfect instead of actual competitions where you have to respond to what hits back? https://atpractice.substack.com/p/forms-dont-hit-back

You can train, but you can't rehearse. You can only show up and respond.

practicing in a vacuum feels productive until you realize you're just shadow boxing. real growth needs friction - the kind that pushes back. https://atpractice.substack.com/p/forms-dont-hit-back

New essay: Forms Don't Hit Back We practice in comfortable silence, mistaking repetition for mastery. But growth lives in the messy feedback of real competition. https://atpractice.substack.com/p/forms-dont-hit-back

Best part of working alongside agents...sometimes they just *nail* the voice instructions. 😂 @coderabbitai.bsky.social - *chef's kiss*

Most founders keep strategy secret because it feels safer. But honestly? Nobody's asking to see it anyway. There's just never been a reason to show our work.

The best strategic thinking stays locked in boardrooms. Which is exactly why it shouldn't. https://atpractice.substack.com/p/inviting-strangers-into-the-strategy

What happens to strategy when you stop thinking in private and start thinking out loud with strangers? https://atpractice.substack.com/p/inviting-strangers-into-the-strategy

What if the stuff we're measuring isn't actually moving the needle, and we just don't want to admit it? https://atpractice.substack.com/p/the-line-that-didnt-move

Day 2 in Portugal and so far I’ve learned: - Portuguese drivers are more pedestrian friendly than Canadian drivers - If you purchase a building with a tiled exterior, you can’t change it. Heritage restrictions - The tarts are WAY better with a cinnamon dusting. Never going back

Strategy lives in small rooms. Nobody outside ever really sees how you think - not because it's secret, but because there's never been a reason to expose it.

I've been thinking about why we keep strategy locked in conference rooms. There's something powerful about letting strangers poke holes in your thinking. https://atpractice.substack.com/p/inviting-strangers-into-the-strategy

I've been thinking about how easy it is to commit to something without ever defining what done actually looks like. https://atpractice.substack.com/p/the-line-that-didnt-move

Been thinking about how much courage it takes to show your actual thinking, not just the answer. The messy process, the tools, the doubt. That's where real feedback lives. https://atpractice.substack.com/p/inviting-strangers-into-the-strategy

Really appreciating that saying no to things isn't that's laziness. The people who move the needle aren't the ones saying yes to everything. They're the ones protecting their focus.

New essay: "Inviting Strangers Into the Strategy Room" Why we should share the thinking, not just the outcomes. https://atpractice.substack.com/p/inviting-strangers-into-the-strategy

I've been thinking about how the higher you climb, the more feedback you get about everything except yourself. At some point people stop telling you the truth. https://open.substack.com/pub/atpractice/p/the-feedback-you-stop-getting?r=1ikro&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Most strategy stays abstract when it should be concrete. That gap? That's where the real work lives.

LOL these agent-first systems are a rabbit hole of endless edge cases. Yes adding communication channel makes sense. Yes it was more than I expected. And yes I do want to to flip a table now. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Saw a job posting yesterday that asked for "10+ years experience" and "proven track record at scale." They were hiring for a role that needed someone scrappy and willing to learn. They filtered out every person who could actually do it well.

When your team stops bringing you bad news, you've already lost them. They're just waiting for the exit. The best teams tell you what's broken. Early. Often. Even when it hurts.

Ask yourself: would you use this if no one was watching? If the answer's no, you're probably building theater.

Easter weekend...the perfect time for our 14 year-old to launch their merch store, and start shilling it to extended family 🙄 Entrepreneurial little blighter. Suppose I've only myself to blame.

Caught up with someone who's mind is like a trap. I'm always impressed. Someone who remembers what you said six months ago and brings it back up, unprompted, is rare. Not taking notes, just listening. If you have someone like that, they're worth keeping close.

As you climb, you lose the feedback that matters most. People tell you about the org. Nobody tells you about you anymore. https://open.substack.com/pub/atpractice/p/the-feedback-you-stop-getting?r=1ikro&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Been staring at a metric that's been flat for months. Not because we're stuck - because we've been okay with stuck. That's the harder conversation. https://atpractice.substack.com/p/the-line-that-didnt-move

This week I chatted with someone who turned down a job offer because the team was "too much." Smart, driven, working long hours. Said it felt like proving yourself every single day. Never thought about it that way before.

Watched a founder hire for "culture fit" and accidentally hire for "thinks like me." Two years later, best ideas in the room came from the one person who didn't. Culture fit is a trap. Cognitive diversity is the actual moat.

Hired someone who'd worked at one of the "Big 3" consulting firms. First week they said: "How do you want me to think about this?" 🤦 TLDR: they'd learned to optimize for what leadership wanted, not what was actually true. That's the real cost of big company time.

Pricing is where founders accidentally reveal what they actually believe about their product. Too low? You think it's commodity. Too high? You're betting on scarcity or status. Most just copy competitors and call it strategy.

Most accountability fails because we never actually define what done looks like. Vague commitments feel safe until they don't. https://atpractice.substack.com/p/the-line-that-didnt-move

“All models are broken; some are useful.” Had a great catch up with an old friend last week, and we were discussing helpful concepts we picked up in our engineering studies. Of all we could remember, this aphorism by George Box feels the most useful. And more accurate each and every day.

I've been thinking about how much of what I learned in business came from books written by people who actually did the thing, not people who studied people who did the thing.

the higher up you go, the fewer people will tell you the truth. that scarcity is the real cost of seniority. https://open.substack.com/pub/atpractice/p/the-feedback-you-stop-getting?r=1ikro&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Watched a founder spend 3 years making themselves irreplaceable instead of the product. When they finally stepped back, everything collapsed. The moat wasn't around the business. It was around their ego.

My grandparents trusted the government to build things. Schools, highways, libraries. Somewhere between then and now we flipped to assuming it'd screw us over. Not sure we gained anything in that trade.

We call them "resources" so we extract them. Maori call them "taonga" so they protect them. Language isn't neutral. It's a choice about what matters. What would change if we renamed things differently?

been thinking about how the books that would've made this list in 1996 are almost unrecognizable from 2026. not because business changed. because everything else did. and that's the real education.