September 2026
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsYour 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.
Field Notes
Consulting Operations900 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.
Field Notes
Consulting Operations70% 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.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsWhen 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.
Field Notes
Consulting Operations35% 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.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsSay 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.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsWhat 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.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsI 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.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsTarget Spent $7 Billion in Canada to Learn Something the Third Question Would Have Told Them
New research on 20 global retailers finds expansion failures are decided before entry, by a question most teams never ask.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsStrategy Is a Filter, Not a Plan
A product that had burned through three PMs was building everything from scratch. The fix wasn't a better roadmap. It was cutting until one thing left.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsIf a Client Plus Claude Plus One Engineer Can Do It, the Work Isn't Yours Anymore
A sharp test for advisory work: could your client plus a good model plus one engineer deliver 80% of it? The usual answer to that test is too soft.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsIt's the System 98% of the Time. Deming Said 94%. Your Instinct Says It's the Person.
In my engagements, what arrives as a people problem turns out to be a systems problem about 98% of the time. Deming put it at 94. Here's why we get it wrong.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsThe Five Whys Finds About 3% of Your Problem
Researchers drew the full causal tree for one incident and found 75+ causes. A Five Whys pass finds one of them. Here's when that's fine, and when it isn't.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsI Wrote Down Eight Risks. All Eight Happened. Nobody Moved.
I logged eight risks against a product at Adaptavist. Within a year all eight had happened and we killed it. Writing them down changed nothing.
Field Notes
Consulting Operations47% of Boutique Firms Lost a Quarter to Half Their Pipeline to ‘No Decision’
Nearly half of boutique firms lost a quarter to half their closed-lost pipeline to no decision. That isn't a closing problem. It's an evidence one.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsThe Five Lenses I Run Before I Diagnose a Team
A team blamed an engineer for 90-day tickets. His actual time in queue was five. Here are the five lenses I run before I diagnose a team.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsThe Person Closest to the Problem Is the Last to See It
The person closest to a problem is often the last to see its gaps — that's how expertise works. Which is exactly why a solo advisor needs outside eyes.
Field Notes
Consulting Operations'MBB Depth Without the MBB Team' Is Half an Answer
A wave of vendors offers boutique advisors MBB-depth research without the MBB team. It's real, it's cheap, and it's only half of what the work needs.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsHow to Research an Audience You've Never Served
Researching an audience you've never served is a different job: the whole task is telling real demand from polite interest. Here's how it's done.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsYour Features Shipped. Your Metrics Didn't Move. The Gap Has a Name.
Your team ships on schedule and the numbers stay flat. That's the build trap — and cheap AI building made it easier to fall into and costlier to ignore.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsYou Don't Choose a Direction Once
You can't set a heading once and walk — the trees pull you off course. Product direction is a bet you re-make, not a decision you make once.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsThe Highest-Value Answer in Market Validation Is 'No'
Validation isn't a green light. For one client, its most valuable output was a no — before a dollar went into a market that wasn't there.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsWhen Your Research Tool Tells You What You Want to Hear
An AI research tool handed me a confident number that was exactly what I wanted to hear — and wrong. The verification gap is the step cheap answers skip.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsI Ran Three Research Projects Through Tavily and Exa. Exa Won All Three.
I ran the same deep-research plan through Tavily and Exa three times, blind-judged and single-variable. Exa won all three — cheaper, faster, more complete.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsAn 80% Team Beats a 95% Team
Ship at 80% and a learning team compounds past a team that polishes to 95% – because shipping is the loop, and the cost of over-polishing is invisible.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsResearch Agents Get Less Accurate the More They Read: 42% Worse From 2 Tool Calls to 150
Deep research agents keep link validity above 92% at every depth while fact-check accuracy falls 42%, so here's the order to verify a report in.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsYou've Researched Enough When Three People Who Live the Problem Agree It's Real
Analysis paralysis isn't cured by more confidence. The stopping rule: when three or four people who live the problem agree your hypothesis is real.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsYour Metric Isn't a Target. It's a Hypothesis You Forgot to Test
Features ship and the metric stays flat because teams treat the metric as a target to hit, not the hypothesis it was built to test.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsConsultant or Fractional CPO? You're Asking the Wrong Question
Founders compare a fractional CPO and a consultant on price and hours – but the real question is whether your gap is a decision or an operating system.
