Field Notes

Practical writing for product leaders and boutique advisors – on deciding what to build, answering the hard questions, and running a sharper practice.

A wooden block spelling consulting on a table
Consulting Operations

A Consulting Firm Is Giving Away Free AI Strategy Reports. Boutique Advisors Should Pay Attention.

West Monroe now gives away the strategy report boutique advisors bill for. Its own AI chief says that proves what's actually still worth paying for.

5 min read
Two attractive mixed race female friends sharing together using smartphone in street cafe
Consulting Operations

Telling People You Use AI Might Lose You Their Trust

A study of 4,000+ people found saying you used AI cost trust more than staying quiet – even when the work itself was identical.

6 min read
Analytics dashboard for content marketing with 1981 Digital
Consulting Operations

Your Delivery Dashboard Might Be Measuring Nothing Anymore

AI didn't break your delivery metrics. It made most of them meaningless – and the one you think is still safe might not be either.

5 min read
Drag and Drop JS code in VSCode editor
Consulting Operations

AI Cuts the Easy 80% of Coding in Half. The Hard 20% Barely Moves.

AI cuts routine coding by up to half but under 10% on hard problems. If your bottleneck is the hard 20%, more AI throughput won't move your ship date.

6 min read
Scrabble, scrabble pieces, lettering, letters, wood, scrabble tiles, white background, words, quote, letters, type, typography, design, layout, focus, bokeh, blur, photography, images, image, manage your assets, assets, savings, asset management, resources, manage resources, mindfulness, intelligence, finance, housekeeping, calculate, common sense, redundancy, take care, carefulness,
Consulting Operations

Product Managers 'Obsolete by 2030'? What the CPO Report Gets Right - and Dangerously Wrong.

A survey of 1,500 CPOs says the product manager is obsolete by 2030. The data underneath shows something narrower: the constraint moved, not the role.

6 min read
A rectangular object with a light on it
Consulting Operations

AI Slows Developers Down at First. The Ones Who Push Through Come Out Faster.

The same developers who were 19% slower with AI in 2025 measured faster a year later. Judging AI at month one measures the dip, not the destination.

6 min read
A toy man standing next to a miniature easel
Consulting Operations

Your AI Agents Don't Have a Model Problem. They Have a Knowledge Problem.

Only 10% of enterprises get AI agents to production. The blocker isn't the model – it's the knowledge layer, and the trust that collapses without it.

6 min read
A close up of a typewriter with a paper on it
Consulting Operations

AI ROI Is 2x a Culture Problem, Not a Tools Problem

Microsoft's 2026 data says culture and management explain 2x the AI impact of individual effort. More seats won't fix an ROI problem that's organizational.

6 min read
Editorial photograph illustrating "AI Writes Code 30% Faster. Your Review Queue Just Got 4.6x Slower."
Consulting Operations

AI Writes Code 30% Faster. Your Review Queue Just Got 4.6x Slower.

AI-generated pull requests wait 4.6x longer for review and pass far less often, so faster coding didn't speed up delivery. The bottleneck just moved.

6 min read