Career Growth
Work Hard, Stay Busy, and Stay Exactly Where You Are
Busyness feels productive, but without creating space for initiative and higher-impact work, you’ll stay stuck at your current level.
Latest
Organizations
Blockers Are Urgent, While Friction Endures
Blockers trigger fire drills, but friction quietly shapes customer and employee behavior every single day. (Additional bonus included - The Toilet Paper Roll Test)
Organizations
Customer Obsession Means Listening Harder—Not Measuring Harder
Large businesses use metrics to handle millions of customers. Yet a single customer story can reveal more than a mountain of metrics—if you’re willing to invest some time to learn more.
Late Career
“Are Right, a Lot”: The Most Misunderstood Amazon Leadership Principle
This leadership principle is less about knowing the right answer and more about getting to the right answer eventually.
People Managers
4 Steps to Delegate (Give Away) Your Work—And Become a Better Leader
Delegation isn’t just about doing less. It’s about getting the work done—and helping others grow in the process.
Early Career
8 Lessons for Work, Life, and Everything in Between
Not everything here will apply to you—but at least one thing might stick. I particularly like number 7.
Personal Dave Posts
AI and the Imminent Death of Capitalism
Successful AGI and capitalism can't coexist. What will happen when AI companies are successful?
Organizations
More Engineers = Less Output? The Costs of Growth.
Growing quickly is lauded as a great thing in the news. But is it always a great thing?
Organizations
Wishing for a Better Outcome Isn't a Mechanism. The COE Approach to Continual Improvement and Avoiding Blame.
Focus on what you can control, and move past your narrow focus on outcomes. When mistakes happen, the right question is: Why did your system allow it? How could you have influenced that result?
Personal Dave Posts
How AI Helps (and Doesn’t Help) with My 70k Reader Newsletter
We're in a weird halfway world where AI is both somewhat competent, and unreliable.
Organizations
The Hidden Cost of Process: A Guide for Tech Leaders
Building processes is a mechanism for resolving issues fully. But they're also bottlenecks which slow your organization down. How do you navigate this conundrum?
Mid Career
KPIs Gone Wild: Cautionary Tales of Lost Customer Obsession
How using KPIs and metrics as proxies, goals, or games leads us away from real customer value.