Quiet Leadership

Change doesn’t come from a reorg or a new title on a slide.

It comes from the person who says, “This isn’t good enough,” and then does something about it. Quietly. Consistently. Without waiting for permission. That’s what standards are—choices made over and over, even when they’re inconvenient, invisible, or unpopular.

The real power isn’t in setting high standards. It’s in holding them when no one’s watching. When shortcuts are easier. When mediocrity is the norm. That’s where most people cave. They look around, see no one else pushing, and assume it’s not worth the fight.

But it is.

Every time someone sticks to their standard, it makes space for someone else to do the same. Not with big declarations, but with small acts of defiance against the average.

The more people who hold the line, the easier it becomes to draw a new one.

Stop Taking Orders. Start Shaping Work

Some tech teams think their job starts when the requirements arrive.

But that mindset turns them into delivery machines—waiting for Jira tickets like orders at a café. The real value isn’t in ticking off tasks. It’s in shaping them. Working with product managers, not for them.

Because PMs aren’t there to write task lists. They’re commercial thinkers. They’re shaping strategy, pushing customer insight, and holding the big picture. They don’t need followers. They need partners.

Do less: waiting for answers.
Do more: collaborating to understand the “why.”

That’s how you build better products—and better teams.

Takeaways: Superhuman's secret to success

📘 The early Superhuman team did something most founders would find wild: they ignored most customer feedback. Not because it wasn’t useful—but because most users weren’t the right users. To find product-market fit, you need to make something some people really love. Not something everyone just kind of likes. This means identifying your "very disappointed" cohort—the people who would be devastated if your product disappeared—and doubling down on w... read more

Went for a 15km run over the weekend and couldn’t resist snapping a photo — Sydney really is a beautiful place.

Validation Comes After Launch

You can’t validate a product with opinions.
People love to be nice. They’ll tell you what you want to hear. “I’d buy that.” “Sounds awesome.” “I’d totally use it.” They’re not lying to be cruel. They’re trying to be supportive. But support doesn’t equal commitment.
The second you ask for money, everything changes.
That’s the gap most early teams fall into. They build confidence through conversation, then get blindsided when no one converts. The t... read more

Increasing Capacity by 37signals

📘 You don’t need more people to do more work. Most teams slow down as they grow. Speed and capacity come from clarity, cohesion, and trust—not headcount. A smaller, sharper team gets more done with less.
📘 37signals runs 4 SaaS products with 60 people. Not long ago, they were at 80, and everything moved slower. Managing a larger team created more overhead, more layers, more drag. Back at 60, they're shipping more than ever. Two new products are i... read more

Ditch Annual Reviews

Yearly performance reviews aren't good. You have probably seen neglected and outdated goals in performance reviews in your career. They become irrelevant pretty quickly. Worse, they do more harm than good.

The best teams ditch the annual review cycle. Instead, they focus on:

• Continuous feedback
• Small, actionable coaching
• Growth over grades
• Space for trial, error and mastery

Master small hills to conquer the peak

While preparing for UTA50 (total elevation 2.1km 😱) and doing some hill training, I looked at the elevation profile and got an idea for an illustration.
From this...

Accountability

Accountability gets things done.

As your teams grow, responsibilities get messy. People step on each other’s toes (welcome to the storming phase!), priorities compete, and work starts to drag.

Clear and explicit ownership fixes that.

When someone is accountable for a specific area of a piece of work, it actually gets finished.

Make Feedback Obvious

People think they’re not getting feedback.

But they are—they just don’t recognise it.

A simple way to fix this? Make it obvious. Instead of letting feedback blend into daily conversations, label it: “Here’s some feedback for you.”

That small shift makes a big difference.

From draft to finished

The point isn’t to get it right. It’s to get it moving. You shape, share, and sharpen through feedback. That’s how the rough idea turns into something worth showing.
Start with a mess. End with a star.

Feedback That Builds

Feedback can trigger defensiveness.

If someone misreads your intention they might feel attacked not supported. That’s why be clear. When giving feedback be up front about your purpose. Make it clear you’re here to help not to criticise or tear someone down.

Didn't know this!

The Balmoral tram line in Sydney operated from 1922 to 1958. It was a branch of the larger North Shore tram network, designed to bring people from the city and surrounding suburbs to Balmoral Beach.
The tram line played a significant role in making Balmoral Beach a popular destination during its operation.

The Tech Debt Spiral

Like a snowball rolling downhill, technology debt simply gets bigger.

Cutting corners and patching things up work for a while. But eventually the codebase becomes a mess. Features take longer to build, and bugs pile up. The team becomes nervous about making changes. This triggers leadership demands speed, trapping everyone in a difficult cycle to break.

Brian Chesky’s new playbook

Everyone Must Row in the Same Direction
Clarity beats compromise. Instead of negotiating how to run Airbnb, Brian made a clear call: unify under one roadmap, one set of priorities, and one way of working. Less micromanagement. More detail. Everyone moving together.
In the Details Is Where Leadership Lives
Brian rejects the stigma around micromanagement. He distinguishes it from “being in the details,” which he says is a sign of true leadership. Y... read more

Strategies evolve in action

No one starts with a perfect strategy. That’s just not how it works.

You set a few goals, spot the obvious roadblocks and take your first steps. How about the rest you might ask? You figure it out along the way. Just keep an eye on the market and overall trends and adjust your strategy as needed. And yeah, unexpected problems will pop up. That’s normal though. They aren’t failures—just part of the process. Every setback teaches you something.

A plan points you in the right direction, but real clarity comes from doing the work. The teams that adapt, adjust, and keep moving—especially when things feel uncertain—are the ones that make real progress.

So don’t wait for the “perfect” plan. Just start. You’ll get there.

Build Thinkers, Not Just Features

To build great products you need to start asking great questions.

A simple question: “What problem are we solving?” will shift a team’s mentality from execution to purpose.
And you can feel the exact moment when task-doers start to solve problems.

It's when they talk less about delivery and shipping features and ask more about business challenges, user pain points and the market.

Questions fuel curiosity and curiosity drives collaboration. Teams that ask deeply create better products.

Bob Moesta: How to find work you love

Stop Making Progress, Start Job Hunting
The moment career progress stops, job searching begins. Most people don’t know how to find a better job because they don’t know themselves. Moesta interviewed and coached over 1,000 people, discovering that without deep self-awareness, most land in roles worse than before.
Jobcation: A Reset for Your Career
After high-intensity roles—especially in startups—a “jobcation” can help. This is a low-effort job wh... read more

Results First

Your first responsibility as a manager is to deliver results.
Not culture. Not vibes. Not endless check-ins. Results.
Too many new managers fall in love with the performance of management. They build dashboards, run meetings, create documentation, set up Slack channels. It feels like work. It looks like leadership. But it doesn’t move the needle. Teams can be busy all week and still achieve nothing.
Being a manager isn’t about activity. It’s abou... read more

Chasing Less

You don't need to unlock that new revenue stream or build another new product that will "definitely be a hit".

A lot of leaders fall into the trap of chasing every opportunity, thinking they can manage it all. Then they delegate putting more on the team's plate. The team gets overwhelmed. Bottlenecks get created. The progress stalls.

Instead, focus. Success comes from deliberate, intentional decisions.