Operating Models

Alignment Is Eating Itself. What Comes After the Deck.

Alignment mechanics were scaffolding for moving information through slow orgs. Agents move it instantly. What's left is the conviction the scaffolding hid.

25 Apr13 min read

Product Shipping Is Up 10x. Design Hiring Hasn't Moved.

Teams shipping 10x more product aren't hiring more designers. Design still matters; most orgs just hire for the wrong part of it.

23 Apr12 min read

The Skills That Got You Promoted Are the Ones Making You Obsolete

Success in the old operating model is a reinvention tax. The senior leaders who mastered roadmap theatre and stakeholder alignment struggle most to adapt.

21 Apr13 min read

30,000 Out. 8,000 In. The Great PM Cull Is Underway.

The 2024–2026 layoff cycle isn't a ZERP correction. It's a talent swap at a 3.75:1 ratio, with an entirely different skill filter. Most discourse misses it.

20 Apr10 min read

You'll Get the AI Org Design Wrong Twice

Most enterprise AI teams centralise first, then decentralise. Both fail. Here's the hub-and-spoke structure that actually works.

14 Apr6 min read

Every Team Has a Barrel Problem. AI Just Exposed It.

Keith Rabois' barrels vs. ammunition framework reframes what AI changes about teams. More ammunition without more barrels solves the wrong problem.

14 Apr8 min read

Enterprise AI Adoption Fails at the Harness, Not the Model

90%+ enterprise AI tool access, most people stuck in chat. The rollout bottleneck isn't the model. It's the harness. Here's the product fix.

13 Apr6 min read

AI Adoption Metrics Are Broken. Watch Your CMO.

The top AI user in high-performing companies isn't engineering — it's the CMO. Here's why that's the real signal for whether AI adoption has reached the decision layer.

12 Apr7 min read

Micro-Optimisation Is a Trap When Your Market Is Exponential

Growth teams trained in linear markets spend 70% on small experiments. In exponential markets, that allocation captures a rounding error.

9 Apr9 min read

AI Multiplied Your Engineers. Your PMs Are Drowning.

AI coding tools tripled engineering output overnight. PM and design headcount stayed flat. The ratio broke, and most orgs haven't noticed yet.

8 Apr9 min read

Capable Is the New Unacceptable: Zapier's AI Fluency Rubric

Zapier's V2 AI Fluency Rubric reveals a calibration problem. Most companies' target for AI adoption maps to Zapier's baseline, one step above their minimum.

1 Apr6 min read