The Agency Cost: Why You Can't Hire Your Way Out of Ignorance
Hired a "Senior Manager" to solve a problem I didn't understand? I didn't hire a solution; I hired a hiding place.
Blog
Thoughts, stories and insights
Smart Notes: The Bottom-Up System
Raw notes and mental models from Sönke Ahrens on turning information into a durable knowledge base through permanent, interconnected writing.
Questioning: Why Knowing is Dangerous
Move from Why to How. Use the questioning framework to find root causes, identify purpose, and build a culture of inquiry in your business.
The Failure Happened Long Before Oracle's 6AM Email
Oracle cut thousands to fund AI. The real mistake happened years earlier, in every hiring conversation where nobody asked the right question.
BluSmart Proved My Belief Right. Then It Collapsed.
I had nine months of experience and thirty driver conversations. I was still wrong about BluSmart. This is the mechanism, not just the mistake.
The Loop Does Not Break. The Mental Model Does
I upgraded my AI report generator and found violations that my validation system missed. Here is what broke and why human oversight is version-specific.
AI Stops You Building Real Skills | Peak by Ericsson
Reading Peak by Ericsson showed me how AI lets me skip the struggle that builds real expertise. A simple framework I use now to learn any new skill properly.
The manager you wished for is the manager AI needs
Why AI gives inconsistent output, and why better briefing, not a better tool, is the fix.
The Map That Ate Eight Years: What Normalisation of Deviance Cost Me in Cash Flow
I held a client for eight years while their payment cycle quietly stretched from 30 days to 120. Here is what normalisation of deviance actually costs.
The Real Lesson from Creativity, Inc. Is About Candor, Not Ideas
Key lesson from Ed Catmull's Creativity, Inc. Discover how to build a culture of candor and psychological safety to stop killing your team's best ideas
Success Traps: The Operators Protocol for Stopping
Growing a business requires changing your behavior. Learn why operators must build a To-Stop list and stop adding too much value to team ideas.
The GPU Banana: Why AI's Numbers Don't Add Up Yet
The AI economy isn't a rocket ship; it's a hall of mirrors. I analyze my own exploding AI costs, the Sim-to-Real gap, and why 95% of enterprise pilots are failing to show ROI