A short post about unstoppable teams.

All teams will face this moment sooner or later.

Torpedoes hit and chaos erupts. This feels like the end.

You see those who freeze and are lost in analysis or despair. Others grab buckets, extinguish fires and patch the holes. Those who can't handle the shitstorm often leave or, worse, switch off - but the team that stays learns.

Each crisis builds resilience and over time, the screams fade, the paralysis lessens and the team grows steady.

One day, the torpedo hits again but nobody panics. Everyone acts, shoulders the load and trusts each other to hold the line.

That's the moment you know your team is unstoppable.

Protecting Discovery: A Playbook for Product Managers

Audience: Early-career and seasoned Product Managers, Product Owners, and cross-functional leads who want to lift team creativity and ship products customers rave about.

Why Rushing to Solutions Backfires

• Solution-first thinking kills curiosity. The instant you pitch a fix, the room defaults to critique rather than exploration.
• Creativity needs slack. When discovery is compressed, edge cases, fresh perspectives, and customer nuance vanish.
• Ownership drives quality. Teams fight for ideas they helped shape; they resist ideas handed down.

Common Scenarios Where Discovery Gets Short-Circuited

The Discovery-First Framework

1. Frame the Problem, Not the Fix

• Clarify the friction: user pain, market gap, or workflow snag.
• Share constraints: budget, timeline, regulatory, tech stack.
• State the desired outcome: measurable impact or customer behaviour change.

2. Hold the Space

• Use open prompts:
• “Where does this break for users?”
• “What edge cases worry you?”
• Embrace silence - ideas bloom in the gap.
• Capture themes, not verdicts.

3. Invite Diverse Voices

• Engineers for feasibility checks.
• Designers for journey mapping.
• Sales/Support for frontline insights.
• Reference models like Atlassian's Team Playbook “Discovery Play” for facilitation.

4. Convert Insights into Experiments

• Draft thin-slice prototypes or assumption tests.
• Prioritise by risk vs. learning value.
• Track outcomes in a shared dashboard (e.g. Productboard, Jira).

5. Guard the Vision, Not the Path

• Keep goals visible: OKRs, North-Star metric.
• Let the team iterate on execution details.
• Step in only to re-align on purpose, not on pixel placement.

Quick Reference: Discovery-Boosting Questions

• “What's the riskiest assumption here?”
• “If we had unlimited time, what would we explore first?”
• “How might a power user break this?”
• “Which customer quote captures the pain best?”

Agility is misunderstood. True agility adapts to change without succumbing to chaos. It's never about rushing decisions.

The best teams balance flexibility and structure. Agility thrives on collaboration, iterative progress and responsiveness - anchored by clear direction. Without this balance, chaos replaces speed and quality falls victim to a mirage of progress.

Agile isn't a strategy. It's how strategies breathe.

Agile vs Strategy

Using no-reply emails puts up a barrier and can leave customers feeling ignored.

Instead, businesses should use email addresses that invite replies and ensure responses. It's a simple way to build stronger relationships and gather valuable feedback.

If your team isn't performing at its best, it may not be a talent problem - it might be a leadership ceiling.
“Why isn't my high-performing team delivering?”“How do I unlock my team's full potential?”“What's causing low team morale or execution delays?”“How to lead when your team is stuck or confused?”“What makes a great product leader?”
No matter how skilled your people are, they can only move as fast and as clearly as you lead th... read more

TL;DR

Role clarity is oxygen. Let PMs own direction and PDs own experience. Protect calendars, write before debating, adjust volume by phase and track one metric that matters. Ship faster, sleep better.

1. Draw the Line Early

Product Manager (PM)

• Core focus: market and viability risk
• Typical questions: “Will people pay for this?” “Does it move the North-Star metric?”
• Key output: one-pager covering purpose, success metrics and trade-offs

Product Designer (PD)

• Core focus: usability and desirability risk
• Typical questions: “Can customers complete the task?” “Where do they stumble?”
• Key output: clickable prototype showing flow, copy and edge states

2. Guard the Calendars

Red flag: PM trapped in Figma tweaking icons.
Red flag: PD buried in cost–benefit spreadsheets.
Fast filter:

• If the task changes product vision, it belongs to the PM.
• If the task changes product surface, it belongs to the PD.

This discipline frees the roadmap and keeps creative energy high.

3. Write First, Talk Second

• PM posts a succinct one-pager to Slack outlining problem statement, success measures and known constraints.
• PD replies with a Figma link showing interactive flow, micro-copy and empty-state behaviour.
• Only then schedule a 30-minute debate. Decisions lock in, iteration time halves.

4. Phase-Based Volume Control

• Framing / Discovery – PM's voice dominates; market-sizing memo appears.
• Ideation & Prototyping – PD leads; high-fidelity Figma frames drop.
• Build & Polish – PD still loudest; design-system tokens freeze.
• Launch & Iterate – PM turns the volume back up; KPI dashboard lights up.

5. Share One Scorecard

Choose a single, public metric - activation lift, task-success rate or first-week retention. Both crafts pull the same lever, killing silos and politics.

6. Outcomes You Can Expect

• 25–40 % faster time-to-decision (anecdotal data from five Aussie SaaS teams).
• Higher designer morale: fewer context switches, deeper craft.
• Sharper product bets: PMs stay market-obsessed, avoiding “feature museum” creep.

Recommended Tools & Rituals

• Figma for rapid prototypes (PD).
• Miro/FigJam for story mapping (shared).
• Amplitude or Mixpanel for the single metric (PM).
• Weekly 15-minute “Line-Check” stand-up: confirm who owns which decisions this sprint.

Working at a small tech business shapes your career differently.

You'll juggle strategy, customer service, product development and beyond. The small team demands versatility, immersing you in every aspect of the business. This hands-on experience accelerates learning and builds skills quicker than larger organisations ever could.

For ambitious minds craving growth and variety, nothing compares.

If you've ever felt like something's off in your team...a process dragging, communication breaking down or decisions getting delayed but didn't say anything because “it's not your job to fix it,” you're not alone. This is where most teams get stuck. The problem is visible, even painful, but no one names it.
Not everything broken is yours to fix. But seeing the cracks (and calling them out) is your responsibility.
Silence protects dysfunction. If ... read more

Dedicated QA creates more problems than it solves.

When a dev team owns quality, accountability stays in the right hands. Bugs are fewer, fixes are faster and processes tighten.

Introducing dedicated QA shifts that balance.

Developers grow complacent, relying on testers to catch mistakes. Tools diverge, creating inefficiencies. QA often duplicates what devs should already handle.

Quality isn't a separate role. It's a shared responsibility embedded in every line of code.

I recently listened to Lenny's podcast, where he spoke to Dalton Caldwell, Managing Director at Y Combinator, and discovered a few interesting insights. Here are 10 of them:
To succeed in a startup keep going, try new things and believe in your idea.
Airbnb faced multiple challenges and setbacks before achieving success, including the possibility of shutting down several times prior to entering Y Combinator. The founders of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, ... read more

The SCQA (Situation, Complication, Question, and Answer) framework, also known as the Minto Pyramid Principle, is a communication and problem-solving tool that breaks down complex ideas into simpler, more manageable parts.
SCQA is often used in a business context where time is limited and decision-makers have to quickly grasp important information.
The SCQA format has four components:

Here are some of the benefits that you can enjoy by using th... read more

Basecamp went big this week!
There's a lot of hate and negative vibes around the recent Basecamp's corporate policy changes. See the announcement “No more societal and political discussions on our company Basecamp account”. People were quick to accuse DHH and Jason Fried of eliminating freedom of speech.
I'd like to share four points.
I respect DHH and Jason for being very clear on what they believe the right thing for Basecamp is. There's nothi... read more

Product managers decide what to build next. They are accountable for the overall success of the product.
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As a Product Manager, you are given the opportunity to solve customer and business problems.
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Getting into product management with no experience may seem daunting, but you can achieve your goal by breaking it down into smaller steps. Start by taking on a pet project, reading business books, getting a job at a tech company, and acting like a product manager. Keep building your skills, and you will soon be on your way to a career in product management.
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Product management advice often focuses on mastering tools, but tools are just a means to an end. Spending too much time on them can distract from what matters most - understanding customers and solving their problems.
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In an organisation, when a decision to create a new product is made, there is a high chance that one of the existing teams will be allocated to the task right away. Management expectation is always high, and it's usually assumed that the team can shift gears immediately and become productive in a matter of days.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work this way. And let's not forget that it takes much longer for a completely new team to jell and perform.
T... read more