How I manage product organisations — like software.
Every software project ships two documents. A README for how to work with it. A playbook for how it operates. I maintain both.
Most product leaders accumulate a set of principles and habits over time. Few make them explicit. I write mine down — partly because explicit expectations are generous, partly because you can't debug what you can't inspect.
This is my operating system. Three modules. core.md — the four pillars underneath everything. readme.md — how I'm wired and what to expect working with me. playbook.md — how I think about product success across any context I've worked in.
Synthesis
Pattern recognition across domains, cultures, and disciplines. The cross-domain thinking that turns ambiguity into decisions.
executionStewardship
Building organisations and products that outlast me. Leaders who lead, teams that ship, cultures that compound.
ambitionResilience
Three cities, four full restarts. Composure under ambiguity isn't a personality trait — it's practiced.
curiosityEmpathy
Standing up for the people who haven't had someone stand up for them. High standards, genuine care, no contradiction.
Leadership · ⌘
How I lead
Who I am
I'm a product leader with engineering roots who builds systems that scale — products, teams, and cultures where people do the best work of their lives.
I've rebuilt from scratch three times — across three countries, three industries, three languages. That experience taught me that the ability to stay composed in ambiguity and keep building when the path is unclear is the most valuable capability a team can have.
How I'm wired
My mind naturally lives in "what's next?" — I see possibilities before they're fully built, and I genuinely believe the best work happens when people are having fun doing it. I process the world by doing. I'd much rather we fix a moving car than spend months planning a stationary one.
That wiring has real edges:
- I move fast — sometimes too fast. When energised, I can fill the room, jumping to solutions before others have had space to sit with the problem.
- I chase what's next. The next possibility is always pulling at me. That means I can shift direction before fully landing the last thing.
- I reframe too quickly. My instinct is to find the upside — but that can mean moving past a problem instead of through it.
- I overcommit. Everything feels possible, so I say yes too often.
- I get restless when things stall. When progress slows, I feel it physically.
I share these not as excuses, but as an invitation. The best teams I've led called these out in real time.
High standards, low ego
I want us to be the best at what we do. But I don't care about being the "boss."
- Extreme ownership, zero judgment. I expect ownership-level thinking, but honest questions are always welcome.
- Real talk. I'll always tell you the truth, even when it's uncomfortable — and I expect the same in return.
- Human-first punctuality. I value your time. But if you're two minutes late, don't apologise — take a breath, refresh, and bring your best energy.
What I expect / What you can expect
From you
- Own your seat. I provide direction and cover; you own the outcome.
- Bring the real talk. Challenge my ideas. That's how we raise the bar together.
- Navigate uncertainty. Don't wait for the fog to clear — break ambiguous problems down and start moving.
From me
- I'll clear the path. My job is to unblock you, shield you from noise, and coach you to your next level.
- I'll invest in you. Developing leaders is how organisations scale.
- I'll be direct. You'll never have to wonder where you stand.
Meeting cadence
| Meeting | Frequency | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| 1:1s | Weekly | Your time. Well-being, growth, impact, blockers. |
| Growth Talks | Every 6 weeks | Long-term development. Feedback both ways. You set the agenda. |
| Chapter Sync | Weekly | Functional standup — showcase work, surface dependencies, sharpen craft. |
| Product Coffee | Biweekly | Casual check-in. Celebrate wins, share updates. |
| Trio Check-in | Biweekly | Mission team review: goals, metrics, blockers, health. |
| Weekly Update | Async | Written: reflections, top 3 priorities, where I need support. |
If a meeting isn't working, improve or eliminate it. Time is the scarcest resource — spend it with intention.
First 180 days
| Phase | Focus |
|---|---|
| 30 Days | Observe and absorb. Share how we operate compared to your past experience. Ship your first sprint. |
| 60 Days | Build a working model of the product, processes, and dynamics. Where are the biggest opportunities? |
| 90 Days | Identify 1–2 flagship initiatives to execute over the next 60 days. |
| 180 Days | Mutual feedback and a roadmap for your next phase of impact. |
Product · ∞
How I think
Capital and character
I view leadership through a dual lens: capital and character. Every initiative is an investment with an expected return, a time horizon, and kill criteria. But the human systems — trust, clarity, psychological safety — are what make those investments compound over time.
The 80/20 value engine
Deliver 80% of the value in 20–50% of the time. Not just speed — ruthless prioritisation. Moving fast matters, but moving fast on the right things matters more.
Roadmap as portfolio
I treat every roadmap as a portfolio — allocating effort like capital, with expected returns and hard trade-offs. When I evaluate a roadmap, I'm asking: What commercial lever does this move? What's the expected return and time horizon? What are we choosing not to do? How does this compound over time?
Strategy is a sacrifice
If nothing on the roadmap makes someone uncomfortable, it's a wishlist, not a strategy. Strategy is a set of choices — and choices mean something doesn't get done. Every PM should be able to articulate how their sprint impacts the company's commercial goals.
The IC instinct
I'm a builder. Analytics pipelines, event taxonomies, AI prototypes, experimentation infrastructure. I stay hands-on not to prove technical credibility — but because product leaders who lose touch with the reality of building make worse strategic decisions.
Transformation · ∆
How I build teams
Mission-based trios
I architect organisations around outcome accountability, not function. Cross-functional trios — product, engineering, design — own missions end to end. They ship outcomes, not features. They run independently, with the authority to make decisions in their domain.
Developing leaders who lead without you
The test of a leader: does the organisation run when you leave the room? I've built teams that maintained full operational continuity during months of absence. Not because I'm not needed — but because I invested in leaders who don't need to check with me before making good decisions.
- Growth plans for every direct. Documented milestones, stretch assignments, 12-month trajectory.
- 1:1s as coaching, not therapy. Focused on strategic development, not operational problem-solving.
- Visible development. When someone on the team grows, it's framed as intentional development — not happy accident.
- Succession thinking. Always building the answer to "who takes this seat if I move on?"
The human engine
High-trust environments yield the highest commercial velocity. This isn't soft — it's structural. Teams are made of people, not roles. I look at team well-being as fuel for performance — not a nice-to-have.
How we win
Move fast — perfection is the enemy of learning. Deliver value early, iterate, and prove impact.
Have fun — seriously. The best products come from teams that enjoy building them.
Stay human — we are more than our Jira tickets. I care about what changed because we shipped, not what we shipped.
Personal
What energises me
Coaching and developing people. Learning obsessively. Time with family. Cycling, skiing, swimming, skating. Oddly enough, grocery shopping.
What drains me
Meetings without clear goals or next steps. Overcomplicating simple problems. Lack of ownership or self-reflection. Being hungry.
Every product leader develops an operating model. Mine is organised around four inputs that determine whether a product organisation succeeds: the talent you have, the strategy you pursue, the customer you serve, and the domain you operate in. Get those inputs right and most things follow.
Within those inputs, I've come to believe there are five dimensions of product leadership that cut across every context I've worked in. The dimensions persist. The systems underneath them flex.
The five dimensions
Insights
Most teams don't have an insights problem — they have a retrieval problem. Signal gets generated and then lost.
"Insight that can't be retrieved is insight that didn't happen."
Bets
Strategy is mostly subtraction. Choosing what to do is the easy half; choosing what to drop is where most teams flinch. Strategy is a portfolio of bets, not a plan.
"Reversibility and speed change the math more than people admit."
Outcomes
Shipping is not the outcome. Learning is. The job is to engineer execution so impact teaches you something — whether the bet won or lost.
"Every shipped thing should answer a question, not just close a ticket."
Conviction
Teams move at the speed of belief. The job is to manage expectations honestly, create alignment without compression, and protect optimism when the work is hard.
"Conviction is certain enough to commit, open enough to be moved."
Flow
A team's output is bounded by the friction in its system. Building the yard well — the cadence, the substrate, the human-and-agent workflow — is the highest-leverage work a leader does.
"Build the yard, not just the ship."
Running through all five
Evidence-led
I work from data and signal, not from opinion or seniority. Every dimension has a data layer — signals I gather, metrics I track, sources I trust. When I override the evidence, I say so explicitly and take ownership of that call. The goal isn't to hide judgment behind data. It's to make judgment visible.
Explicit expectations
I make role expectations, success criteria, and trade-offs visible. Most product friction — misalignment, missed goals, performance problems — traces back to people who were guessing what "good" looks like. I write these things down and share them. Explicit expectations are generous. They let people direct their energy at the work, not at reading the room.
There's a German word I've borrowed: Bock — as in ich hab Bock drauf, the feeling when you actually want to do something. Not discipline or obligation, but genuine energy for the work. The dimensions describe the structure. Bock is the energy underneath them. Every team I've been part of at its best has had it. You can feel when it's there and when it isn't, and no operating model substitutes for it.
I run these dimensions through a personal agent — Aaka — that helps me operate at this level of intention consistently.
The OS is a working model, not a finished one. I've been revising it for the better part of a decade. Some dimensions I'm confident in. Others I'm still testing. I update it when I find a better way — which means it will look different in a few years. That's intentional.