Welcome to Field Notes
What this blog is for, who it's for, and what to expect — practical writing for product leaders and the boutique advisory firms that rely on them.
Matthew Stublefield
2 min read
Most consulting blogs are sales brochures dressed up as thought leadership. The post you're reading right now exists because I think there's a better use for this space.
What this blog is for
Field Notes is the working surface for the patterns I keep running into. After twenty years leading product teams and more than a decade diagnosing them from the outside, the same problems show up over and over – in different costumes, in different industries, but with the same underlying shape. A team that can't ship. A leader who can't see the system they're inside. A pile of documents nobody can keep up with.
I write about those patterns here for two reasons. First, because writing forces me to be honest about what I actually believe – the half-formed intuitions I lean on with clients have to survive contact with a published page. Second, because the people I most want to work with are quietly looking for a perspective like this, and a blog is how they find one.
Who it's for
Three audiences:
- Product leaders facing a delivery problem they can't see the cause of, or a strategy debate that won't end. These posts will sit in the Diagnostic Sprint and Strategy Sprint categories.
- Solo and boutique advisory firms trying to operate a sharper practice – intake, deliverables, follow-up, the whole back office of a firm that bills by the hour. That's the Consulting Operations category.
- Knowledge workers and operators who want to understand where AI is genuinely useful in document-heavy work, and where the hype outpaces the substance. That's Knowledge & AI, and it's adjacent to a service I'm building called Fieldway Intelligence Services.
If you're in any of those buckets, you're in the right place.
What to expect
Concrete writing. Specific examples. Numbers when I have them. I won't post if I don't have something to say, and I won't pad a thin idea to hit a length target. The cadence will be irregular and the posts will vary in length – some will be 600 words on a single observation, others will be longer essays that work through a case in detail.
If you'd rather not check back, subscribe to the newsletter and I'll send the next one when it's ready.
Why "Field Notes"
Because that's what they are. The work happens in the field, with clients, on whiteboards, in their org charts and their inboxes. What gets written here are the notes I take afterward – what I noticed, what surprised me, what I'd do differently. They're not finished theories. They're the working drafts of a perspective that gets sharper every time I write one down.
Welcome aboard.
More Field Notes
- Consulting Operations
Scope Creep Isn't an Effort Problem. The Stalled Migration Shipped When Someone Could Say 'Later.'
A stalled project rarely needs more effort. It needs a smaller launch, a home for the cuts, a date, and someone allowed to say "later."
- Consulting Operations
Enthusiasm Isn't Pull: Rob Snyder's Test for Whether Anyone Will Actually Buy
Most validation interviews measure enthusiasm, which predicts little. Rob Snyder's PULL test asks whether a buyer is stuck on something they must do.
- Consulting Operations
It Was Scoped as a Four-Day Job. The Real Problem Needed Six Months, and It Came In Under Budget.
When the work you were hired for isn't the client's real problem, say so early and with evidence. An honest re-scope builds trust, not suspicion.
Want help running a sharper practice?
The reading and synthesis behind your client work, handled – a living deliverable kept current, so more of your time goes where your name is actually on the line.