Field Notes
Practical writing for product leaders and boutique advisors – on deciding what to build, answering the hard questions, and running a sharper practice.
Vision Is the Destination. Mission Is the Vehicle. Strategy Is the Route.
When a team cannot state all three, build decisions default to whoever spoke loudest, and the features stop adding up to anything.
Your Client Now Arrives With a Draft Answer. That Changes What They're Buying.
Advisory engagements used to start at a blank page. They now start at someone else's confident draft, and that is a different first week.
900 Issues in the Backlog. I Closed Hundreds and Nobody Was Upset.
Adding work to the backlog feels safe and is avoidance. Closing the items nobody could justify was experienced as relief, from VP to junior dev.
70% of the Way There Is Only Valuable If the 70% Is Right
A first draft is free now. Below a quality threshold it costs an advisor more than a blank page, and that threshold is the whole question.
When the Problem Is Sales, More Product Will Not Fix It
Companies route every problem to product and engineering because those teams always say yes. That is not evidence the problem lives there.
35% Understand the Problem but Not What Done Looks Like. I'd Have Bet the Opposite.
My day-one test on a struggling team is whether anyone can say why. New survey data says the bigger gap sits at the other end of the ticket.
Say Yes to the Two-Week Idea. It's How You Buy the Right to Say No.
Fighting every executive request loses, because leadership escalation is the dominant force on real roadmaps. Here is what to spend instead.
What a Product Strategy Consultant Costs (and Why the Day Rate Is the Wrong Number)
Published market rates for product strategy help, what each option actually buys, and the question that separates judgment from capacity.
I Found Ten Tickets for a Decision Nobody Had Made
Work drafted before a decision does not stay neutral. Once it is in the tracker it argues for one option, and nobody has to defend it.