Product leader and builder
I've spent 20+ years building products, leading teams, and designing systems in complex organizations.
How I work
The minimum process needed to be effective.
Understand
Start with customer and market needs. Map the system and make the problem clear enough to act on.
Start
Starting is the best way to begin learning and make progress. Use judgment, but do not let endless debate become the work.
Own
Leadership comes from everywhere. Own the problems in your world and make it easier for other people to lead.
Improve
Give honest, timely feedback and keep fixing small things. The small fixes add up.
Startups to enterprise
I've seen early-stage startups figuring out what to build, scaling companies improving what they built, and enterprises working through years of accumulated complexity.
That work has included user research, product strategy, design systems, and team development.
I care about things that actually work: useful tools that solve problems for the people using them.
Systems thinking
Building useful things means understanding how information flows, how decisions get made, and how teams coordinate.
Product work is systems design. I tend to reduce complex things into flowcharts. If I cannot map the problem, I probably do not understand it yet.
That habit started with my engineering degree at Northwestern University and has carried through consulting, product, design, research, strategy, and leadership roles.
What I'm building now
Right now I work across product, growth, data, engineering, operations, and AI.
I am building tools that help people use AI in their day-to-day work: keeping useful information at hand, recording decisions, and checking the results. I want those tools to make the work easier to pick up and continue.
The work is familiar: understand the customer, find what is getting in the way, build something useful, and learn from what happens next.
How I try to work
I build instead of speculating, start simple, and use evidence. I give people room to lead and keep fixing small things.
I value transparency, trust, respect, and ownership. I try to state what I know, what I do not know, and what I think we should do next. I move fast, sometimes too fast, so I am continually working on sharing context and bringing people along.
The longer version is my Manager README. It covers one-on-ones, feedback, development, ownership, and how I try to serve the team.