Field Notes
The Weight of Owning OKRs
Executive leadership announces ambitious OKRs, and everyone looks to you. You're expected to deliver results, but the vision is unclear and your strategy is dated. Your teams are working overtime, yet the numbers aren't cooperating. When strategic foundation is missing, here's what actually needs to change.
Better Than Master Of One
Modern leadership demands more than mastery of one skill. The leaders who thrive aren’t specialists - they’re integrators who align disciplines, accelerate progress, and build resilient teams. Here’s why breadth is not dilution, but the true edge.
Existential Anxiety, And the Art of Getting Out of Bed
The world feels chaotic, political divisions insurmountable. Yet we coordinate brilliantly with colleagues with whom we may disagree fundamentally. We've mastered systematic empathy for corporate goals. What if we applied the same frameworks to our divided communities?
From Chemo to Co-Creation, My AI C-Suite
Sitting in chemotherapy, I started collaborating with ChatGPT on an app idea. What happened next changed how I work forever - and led to founding meNOTme, a transparent AI platform solving content creation exhaustion.
Betting On Q4, Or Planning It?
This year's performance hasn't met expectations. Looking forward to Q4, you know something needs to change. Without strategic foundation, you're betting significant resources on what might matter, hoping your investments pay off. Is your Q4 planning hopeful or confident?
Executing the Backlog Is Not a Strategy
Your team is shipping fast and working hard - but the results aren’t moving. Conversion is flat, trust is slipping, and no one can quite name why. If you’ve got the people but still aren’t seeing impact, the problem isn’t execution. It’s strategic design direction.
Funding In Hand, Every Path Looks Possible
You climbed the funding mountain and reached the plateau. Resources secured and vision validated. But now every decision feels equally urgent, every path looks promising, and your team is waiting for direction. The vision that won stakeholders over feels clear and impossibly vague at once.
AI’s Fool’s Gold Promise to Fix Everything
While executives celebrate AI implementation, most teams barely touch these tools beyond mandatory demos. The gap between AI champions and everyone else reveals uncomfortable truths about adoption barriers that aren't solved by mandates or enthusiasm. Smart organizations ask different questions.
The Fog Feels Safe Until It Isn’t
Teams operating in strategic fog pay compounding interest on every decision. There's safety in fighting familiar fires, but without clear direction, brilliant people get stuck in expensive reactive cycles. A forward scout approach establishes strategic clarity while your teams keep executing.
Mandating AI Will Fail
While most teams stay on the well-traveled path, a select few venture into new territory. I've been working with organizations where only a handful of people have left familiar workflows behind. But here's what's interesting: these early adopters aren't just using new tools. They're quietly discovering something the rest of us are missing.
Let’s Talk Hiring - Leader to Leader
Hiring today is harder than it should be. Between clunky platforms, disconnected talent teams, and keyword-driven filters, great candidates are slipping through the cracks - while hiring managers are left frustrated and under-resourced. If you’ve felt the pain of trying to build a strong team in a broken system, you’re not alone. Here’s a more human, direct, and effective way to recruit - one that actually works.
When Teams Shrink, Opportunities Expand
Teams everywhere are downsizing, leaving talented mid-level contributors stretched thin without the guidance they need. But what if leaner teams meant better clarity, smarter strategy, and stronger outcomes? Here's how fractional strategic leadership turns shrinking teams into expanding opportunities.
It’s Hard To Look Ahead
Your team is carrying a heavy weight. Sprinting. Checking every box. But without a clear vision, it can feel like you’re grinding forward, unable to see the path ahead. This post is about what happens when teams confuse motion for momentum - and how planting a flag at the top of the mountain changes everything.
AI Needs Us - for Now
AI isn’t taking your job, not yet. What it is coming for are the repetitive, ambiguous tasks that slow teams down and burn people out. For now, for most of us, the question isn’t about replacement, it’s about leadership. Can you dream what’s possible, make tough decisions, and guide AI as part of your team? That’s where opportunity lies. Not in prompts. And not in holding onto the way things were.
A New Chapter. The New Model.
The agency model is shifting. Budgets are tighter, teams are leaner, and expectations haven’t dropped an inch. That’s why I’m launching the next chapter for Reasons More - as a strategic consultancy built for high-accountability product teams, navigating complex inflection points. No bloat. No handoffs. Just executive-caliber thought, embedded partnership, and outcomes that shine.
If you're scaling, stuck, or trying to do more with less - we can help.