How I Work

Over the years, I’ve developed a set of principles that shape how I think, make decisions, build teams, and approach problems.

These aren’t rules for other people. They are principles I try to hold myself accountable to — and they continue to evolve as I learn.

1. Principles I Come Back To

Culture eats strategy for breakfast

Good strategy executed by a weak team rarely beats a good team with a clear sense of purpose.

I care deeply about the environment in which people work: whether people feel comfortable challenging ideas, taking risks, and doing their best work.

Strategy is execution

I’ve come to believe that the distinction between strategy and execution is often artificial.

A strategy that cannot survive contact with customers, technology, economics, and organizational reality isn’t much of a strategy.

I like strategies that eventually become decisions, resource allocation, products, and outcomes.

Great teams out-execute great individuals

I rowed crew for a period of my life, and the idea of “swing” has stayed with me.

Eight strong rowers pulling independently do not make a great boat. The power comes from coordination — everyone moving together at precisely the right time.

I think organizations work the same way.

I would rather build a team that consistently makes each other better than depend on a few exceptional individuals.

Treat everyone as a peer

Titles describe organizational responsibility. They don’t determine who has the best idea.

Some of the most useful insights can come from the person closest to the customer, the engineer closest to the problem, or someone who joined the organization six months ago.

I try to approach people with the assumption that they have something to teach me.

2. How I Think About Decisions

I use the 70/30 rule

Perfect information is usually unavailable.

When I have roughly 70% of the information I need, I trust the people involved, and the cost of waiting is greater than the cost of being wrong, I prefer to make the decision.

The remaining 30% can often be learned by acting.

I distinguish between decisions I need to internalize and decisions I can delegate

This distinction has become increasingly useful to me.

For some decisions, particularly new product or technology ideas, I need to internalize the logic. I want to understand the reasoning, data, assumptions, and tradeoffs well enough to reach the same conclusion as the person recommending the decision.

For other decisions, I don’t need to know everything. I need to be able to support or veto the decision and make sure the right person is accountable for it.

Knowing which type of decision you are making prevents both micromanagement and uninformed delegation.

Disagree, then commit

I want disagreement before a decision — not after it.

If you have a different view, I want to hear it clearly. Bring the data, the principle, the customer perspective, or simply the reason you think I’m wrong.

But once a decision is made, I believe the team should commit to it and make it work.

Decision ownership should sit as close to the problem as possible

People closest to a problem often have the best information.

I expect people to make decisions within their domain and escalate when they are genuinely blocked — not simply because making the decision feels uncomfortable.

3. How I Communicate

Answer first

I value clear thinking expressed clearly.

My default is to start with the answer, recommendation, or point of view and then provide the reasoning behind it.

This is influenced by Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principle: make the structure of the thinking visible rather than asking the reader to discover the conclusion themselves.

Content before format

A beautifully formatted presentation cannot compensate for weak thinking.

For working discussions, I care more about the quality of the idea, the assumptions, and the reasoning than the icons, fonts, or labels.

The polish can come later.

That said, I like structured thinking. I often use MECE — mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive — as a forcing function for clarity.

Clarity, not volume

I would rather receive a short, well-reasoned answer than a long status update that leaves me searching for the point.

When something is unclear, say so.

When you don’t know, say that too.

Good communication makes uncertainty visible rather than hiding it.

Use AI — but validate it

I am enthusiastic about using AI as a thinking and productivity partner.

Use whatever tools help you think, write, research, or build faster.

But the responsibility for the output remains with the person sharing it.

AI can accelerate thinking. It doesn’t remove the need for judgment.

4. How I Lead

Give people clarity and room to operate

I try to give teams clear goals and measurable outcomes while leaving enough room for them to determine how to get there.

My goal isn’t to have every decision come through me.

My goal is to create an environment where good decisions can happen without me.

Give air cover for thoughtful risks

I want people to take intelligent risks.

If someone makes a thoughtful decision, explains the tradeoffs, and it doesn’t work, I would rather help them learn from it than punish them for trying.

As a leader, part of my job is to provide air cover when people are doing the right things for the right reasons — even when the outcome isn’t what we hoped for.

Feedback should be direct and respectful

I don’t believe feedback should be saved for a quarterly or annual review.

If something is working, say so.

If something isn’t working, say that too.

I prefer feedback that is timely, specific, and focused on the work rather than the person.

And I try to have the same standard for feedback going upward as I do going downward.

Challenge ideas, not people

Strong disagreement is healthy.

Personal attacks aren’t.

I want teams where someone can say, “I think this is the wrong decision,” without worrying about what that says about their standing in the organization.

The quality of a team is partly determined by the quality of disagreement it can handle.

5. What I Expect From People I Work With

I look for a few things consistently:

• Think from the customer’s perspective. Understand the problem before proposing the solution.
• Bring clarity, not just information. Tell me what you think the information means.
• Escalate early. Bad news rarely improves with age.
• Prioritize ruthlessly. Everything cannot be urgent.
• Challenge ideas, not people.
• Take ownership. If you see something that needs to be done, don’t assume someone else owns it.
• Read widely. Good ideas often come from outside your immediate field.
• Stay curious. Technology and markets change too quickly for any of us to stop learning.

6. How I Handle Conflict

I would rather have a difficult conversation early than a difficult situation later.

If you disagree with me, tell me.

If something doesn’t make sense, ask.

If I have misunderstood something, correct me.

I appreciate disagreement grounded in data, principle, customer impact, or experience.

I also tend to wear my reactions on my face. If I look confused, I probably am.

That’s usually an invitation to explain — not a signal to stop.

7. What I’m Still Learning

I don’t think a leadership philosophy is useful if it only describes strengths.

There are things I am actively working on:

Delegating more deeply

It is easy to say you trust your team.

It is harder to actually give up control.

I continue to work on distinguishing between something being done differently from how I would do it and something actually being done poorly.

Creating more space for recognition

I naturally focus on problems, decisions, and what comes next.

I need to be equally deliberate about stopping to recognize what people have accomplished.

Saying no

Strategic focus requires subtraction.

I still have a tendency to see interesting possibilities and want to pursue them. Saying no — even to good ideas — is necessary to make room for the great ones.

8. What Keeps Me Curious

My professional interests sit at the intersection of technology, strategy, and building.

I enjoy understanding technologies deeply enough to ask what they might make possible — not just what they do today.

That curiosity has taken me from distributed systems and enterprise technology to product strategy, AI, and quantum computing.

Outside work, I recharge through reading, running, tinkering, building things, and spending time with family.

I also appreciate humor and levity.

Work is hard enough. We should have some fun while doing it.

9. A Few Ideas and Books That Have Shaped Me

I tend to learn by following ideas across disciplines rather than staying within a single category.

Some books and thinkers that have influenced me include:

Philosophy

• The Republic
• Awareness

Thinking

• The Great Mental Models
• Gödel, Escher, Bach
• Surfaces and Essences
• Superintelligence

Science

• The Theoretical Minimum: Quantum Mechanics
• The Gene
• The Beginning of Infinity

Science Fiction

• Permutation City
• Ready Player One

Biographies

• Benjamin Franklin
• Naval Ravikant

I’ve probably exhausted my share of management and self-help books for now.

I’m more interested these days in learning from engineering, science, philosophy, history, and people actually building things.

10. The Goal

Ultimately, I want to build environments where people can do the best work of their careers.

That means having ambitious goals, intellectual honesty, high standards, room to experiment, and enough trust for people to disagree with one another.

I don’t expect to get all of this right.

But these are the principles I keep coming back to.