Field Notes
Practical writing for product leaders and boutique advisors – on deciding what to build, answering the hard questions, and running a sharper practice.
Consulting Operations posts, page 2
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsThe Most Common Root Cause in a Stuck Product Team Is Someone Avoiding a Conversation
When a product team is stuck and the systems cause won't show itself, look for the conversation someone has been avoiding. It's usually there.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsIf Your Best Customer and Your Worst Prospect Give the Same Answer, the Question Tested Nothing
A validation question earns its place only if your best customer and your worst-fit prospect would answer it differently. Most don't.
Field Notes
Consulting Operations31% of Expert-Network Experts Say They've Taken Calls They Weren't Qualified For
A survey of 1,368 network experts found 31% took calls they weren't qualified for. If your name is on the recommendation, the call isn't the evidence.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsEvery Language We Launched Grew 70–120% a Week. The Demand Was Visible Before We Built Anything.
The best market validation is often demand you can already see in what people do. Here's how we found it at CoinDesk before building anything.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsFive Months Late, They Expanded the Offshore Team to 60 Engineers. It Got Later.
A late team kept adding people and kept getting slower. Brooks's law explains part of it. What it leaves out is what late teams actually lack.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsThe Best Product Validation I Ever Got Was a $6.5 Million Quote
A client could afford a $6.5 million training quote and still refused it. That refusal was the best product validation I've ever had.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsVision 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.
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.
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