/product
I don’t start from frameworks for their own sake. I start from what your structure will ship — then we change the wiring so the market gets the thing it rewards.
Conway’s law says organizations produce solutions that mirror their own structure. It runs the other way too. Look at how a company is set up, how its incentives flow, and how its leaders lead, and you can predict what it will build, where that will go well, and where it will get stuck.
Most of my work is that diagnosis, and then the alignment that changes the answer.
If nobody in the room can disagree with the “vision,” it isn’t one — it’s a slogan. A useful strategy makes someone uncomfortable for the right reason. Plans that ignore how the org actually works are theater; plans that only reflect politics aren’t a product plan either.
I want the written-down version to match what the team will actually produce.
CEOs usually arrive believing the problem is capability, strategy, or execution. Often the misalignment is upstream, in what’s written down, how the team is set up, or how leadership at every level leads. An outsider can say that. Your team usually can’t.
I care about numbers that survive a CFO and an auditor — not dashboard theater. Track the decisions and outcomes that change the P&L or the risk, not the ones that only look busy.
Building yourself got cheaper. That made choosing harder, not easier. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should — partners earn their place when they move you farther, faster, or with less risk than doing it in-house.
AI belongs in production only where it’s the natural fit. Break the problem down: deterministic parts as rules; AI where AI earns its keep.
Governed means an inspectable record of every input to a decision, a faithful record of the decision itself, and repeatable tests that catch drift. Someone also has to be accountable. Watch the process. Understand the outliers. You don’t want to ship anything that automates a consequential decision without a human who can stand behind it.
A team of mine was struggling to see the integrated plan behind our strategy. I spent a weekend building it and presented it on Monday. They were grateful, and disappointed: none of their thinking was in it. I handed it back for two weeks and they came back with something better than mine.
Shared ownership over premature certainty. Culture and accountability are operating systems, not posters. Hands-on enough to build it, disciplined enough to let the team own it.
There are four ways to work together: a Product & AI Diagnostic to find what is standing in the way, GTM Acceleration to validate the need and build the go-to-market motion, AI in the Product Lifecycle to bring AI into how your teams plan, build and ship, and Fractional CPO / Chief AI Officer leadership while you find a permanent hire.