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Product Management Craft

Beyond the Dashboard | Principle 5: Focus on Adoption, Not Just Delivery

Shipping is overhead; adoption is the asset. In B2B, features stick and removal is costly, so prevent bloat. In B2C, unused features fuel silent churn. AI can surface adoption signals, not define value. Lead by asking: what delivers outcomes, not what shipped. Treat non-adoption as debt. Measure it.

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Product Management Craft

Beyond the Dashboard | Principle 4: Use Frameworks as Filters, not Blueprints

Frameworks focus attention but don’t decide. Used well, they clarify; used poorly, they paralyze. AI multiplies the noise with context-free models. Leadership must choose one lens per decision, declare boundaries, and decide. Tools assist. Judgment creates clarity. Choose focus over complexity now.

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AI & The Future of Work

Control, Delegate, or Disappear: Thriving in the Age of AI Agents

Agents aren't UX upgrades. They're decision-makers. Mistaking automation for intelligence is a strategic failure. The shift is from operating tools to governing outcomes. Delegate objectives, embed escalation and governance, or your product becomes invisible in an agent-led economy. Govern it. Now

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Data-Informed Decision-Making

Beyond the Dashboard | Principle 3: Choose What to Measure

Think like a doctor, not a data collector. Your dashboards should be a cockpit, not a buffet. Every metric has a cost in attention, fueling debate and cognitive load. Track only what informs decisions. If a number doesn't drive action, it's just noise.

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AI & The Future of Work

AI and the Speed Trap: Why Reskilling Alone Won't Save You

AI won't erase jobs; speed will. The stability-to-obsolete window is collapsing. Stop chasing perishable skills like prompt engineering. Invest in durable capabilities: problem framing, systems thinking, learning velocity, and influence to thrive through constant role shifts.

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Data-Informed Decision-Making

Beyond the Dashboard | Principle 2: Adopt a Data-Informed Approach

Stop being data driven. It breeds passivity and dashboard worship. Be data informed: start with a question, state a hypothesis, define the stakes, then use data to pressure test. AI is a sous chef, not your strategist. Data informs. Judgment makes the call. Decide the meal before you open the fridge

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Communication & Influence

The Engagement Paradox: Why Your Best Work Gets the Quietest Applause

Deep work often gets few public likes. That isn't failure; it's the Engagement Paradox. Your best readers share in Dark Social where you can't see it. Track trust signals: opens, low unsubscribes, private replies. Silence can mean focus or disinterest. Check the data. Measure, then iterate. Smart.

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Data-Informed Decision-Making

Beyond the Dashboard | Principle 1: Avoid the Data Delusion

In the Data Delusion, we focus on metrics while losing sight of what truly matters. We celebrate tiny, irrelevant wins, creating an illusion of progress. Data without human judgment is just noise – it's time to use it to sharpen our questions, not just track our speed.

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Practical AI Application

AI Doesn't Hallucinate. It Makes Mistakes.

Calling AI errors “hallucinations” humanizes machines and inflates expectations. Language is the UI for trust; misuse becomes a shipped bug with churn, support cost, and legal risk. Treat wording like code: define terms, show process, and label errors precisely.

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Data-Informed Decision-Making

Beyond the Dashboard | Intro: Why Your Beautiful Dashboards Might Be Making You Dumber

We’re obsessed with data, but our dashboards often make us dumber. We track everything yet decide nothing. More data, less judgment. This isn't a tooling issue, it's a thinking one. This 11-principle series shares ideas on how to build judgment in an AI era that demands it.

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AI & The Future of Work

When AI Turns Your Product System Into a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

AI now shapes product strategy, not just predicts it. Left unquestioned, it becomes a prophecy engine: reinforcing biases, narrowing options, and derailing learning. Treat AI as input, test counterfactuals, review second-order effects, and keep humans in the reasoning loop. Question it. Validate it.

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Practical AI Application

From “Don’t Do” to “Do Well”: Designing Instructions That Make AI Useful

Instruction design turns a chaotic GPT into a reliable tool. Replace a 'don't do' list with a clear operating model: retrieve verbatim from the knowledge base, format consistently, handle exceptions, and test like software. Positive, explicit rules cut variance and improve UX.

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Communication & Influence

Your Copy is Correct. It’s Also Forgettable.

Generative AI boosts efficiency but flattens voice. When tools push language toward the average, brands and leaders lose distinctiveness. Use AI for polish, not personality. Document tone, keep signature quirks, and build private style models to protect authenticity at scale. Keep your edge.

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Practical AI Application

The Verde Archive bot

LinkedIn buries my old posts, so I built a lightweight AI lookup. Titles and links sit in JSON with ChatGPT-made tags. A custom GPT does prompt-based retrieval. Not full RAG, just fast recall. Next: automate updates via API. Guardrails keep it a helper, not a clone.

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Communication & Influence

When Words Lie: The Invisible Risk in Your Product

Words shape trust. Product language isn’t neutral: it trains mental models. “Friend” now means barely acquainted; “I’m thinking...” makes users over-trust AI. Audit copy, cut unearned metaphors, and test for over-trust. Tech runs on tokens; products run on words. Clarity is a trust contract.

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Product Strategy & Leadership

Harnessing the IKEA Effect for AI-First Products

We love what we build, even when imperfect. That’s the IKEA Effect: effort creates value. In SaaS, let users build: templates, safe drafts, sharing, audit trails, so they feel ownership. Co-create with AI as copilot or constructor. Earn loyalty with portability, not lock-in. Show ownership clearly.

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Practical AI Application

The “One Prompt” Fallacy: Why Voice, Not Prompts, Wins

Stop chasing magic prompts. The fix is not a template. Define your problem, then train AI on your own writing to build a voice profile. Feed real samples, extract patterns, and revise in your style. Protect your data. Do not copy tone. Engineer sharper thinking, not generic outputs. Your voice wins.

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Organizational Design & Culture

Stop Hiring PM “Flavors.” Hire Keystones.

Stop hiring PM “flavors” like “AI PM” or “Growth PM.” Hire Keystone PMs who integrate design, engineering, data and GTM, frame real problems, learn fast, and influence without authority. Durable capabilities compound; trends fade. Hire for outcomes, not buzzwords. Build missions, not titles.

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Product Discovery & Validation

Stop Doing Discovery Karaoke

Match discovery to risk, not habit. Most teams default to interviews, tests, and betas, which miss blind spots. Treat Compliance & Ethics as a first-class risk. Build a simple map: risk → stage → methods. Use AI to speed clustering, summarization, and signal detection. Focus on uncertainty reduction

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Practical AI Application

LLMs, Longform, and Low-Code: What Worked (and Broke) in Real-World Tests

LLMs aid with tight, scoped tasks: cut redundancy, multipass feedback, summary maps, brainstorming. But they struggle with long inputs, continuity and consistent voice. Useful for scaffolding and agents, not autopilot. Keep humans on structure, logic and style. Use models to spot patterns.

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Product Strategy & Leadership

The Invisible Decline of Reasoning

Roadmaps update and backlogs move, yet when asked "Why are we building this?"—silence. That’s reasoning decay: motion without logic. Framing is shallow, strategy drifts, learning unused, priorities wobble, judgment fades, process over purpose. The backlog turns into noise.

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Communication & Influence

"Ahahaha! Busted! You used an em dash—must be ChatGPT!"

Ahahaha! Busted. You used an em dash, must be ChatGPT. I learned about hyphen, en dash, and em dash only recently. I asked ChatGPT, checked Treccani and Merriam Webster. I use AI a lot, but the voice is mine. Tools help me write clearer. The thoughts and the words are still mine. Fully human. True.

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Product Strategy & Leadership

Where Did the Thinking Go?

Rituals are in place, delivery is steady, yet no one can answer why we're building. The logic layer has faded: discovery doesn't shape backlogs, strategy doesn't guide tradeoffs, output eclipses outcomes. Reconnect intent to action by making reasoning visible in every decision. Think with intention.

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Product Strategy & Leadership

The Hidden Cost of Framework Thinking

We live in a world of playbooks and quick frameworks. They help, but when they replace thinking, contribution dies. Stop blind execution. Ask: Is this valid for my context? Original thought is the value. Don't run someone else's logic. Slow down, think, and make it yours. Choose thinking over hacks.

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Product Discovery & Validation

It’s a Great Metaphor, But It’s Still Not an MVP

That skateboard-to-car graphic isn't an MVP. It's a delivery roadmap. MVPs are for learning: the smallest test to validate riskiest assumptions. In complex orgs, call things correctly: MVP for learning, POC for feasibility, V1 for shipping. Clarity prevents waste and misaligned bets. Validate first.