Jan 16, 2025
Patching something broken takes forever. Starting over is seductive in the specific way that throwing out old notebooks is, you feel lighter for about a week, maybe two.
Either way you end up back in a room with the same people and a blank page.
A room full of smart people solving the wrong thing with great energy is one of the more demoralising things to watch, because everyone is trying and the trying is the problem.
Most hard decisions that go badly wrong, somebody in that room had a feeling about it and no language to defend it against a Gantt chart. A decent plan gives you that language. Gives you something to point at when everything around it has gone sideways, which it will.
Anyway, without that, you're just busy.
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I'm a father of 3 from Sydney, a product and technology leader. I write about leadership, product management, technology and the messy reality of making work work.
I'm currently building and experimenting with a mildly alarming number of things. I also work as a fractional product leader, stepping in where the founder or CEO is still carrying product decisions on their own, and offer 1:1 product leadership coaching for senior PMs and emerging product leaders. I founded SoundingBoard, practical peer exchange for product people. Connect via LinkedIn, or follow me on X.
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