The New York Times

Areas of Responsibility (AORs) for Cross-Functional Ownership

Publish a beyond-titles list of who's the DRI for what, so product and marketing always know who to go to.

Backcasting & Reject the Premise

Stand in the future you designed and look back — don't forecast forward from today's constraints.

Beginner's Mind Practice

Deliberately clear the expert's mind to keep every possibility open for the next decision.

Bold-Move Leap (Not Moving Is the Risk)

When you need a step-change, make the committing bold move all at once — because playing safe is itself the risk

Build for the Future Model

Design product ideas for the model capability that is coming, not the one you have today

Category Design: Create Demand vs. Capture Demand

Design your own market category instead of competing for a slice of someone else's.

Chaos Buffers: Planning Around Users Who Don't Owe You Time

Every plan carries a backup and a scope-sized buffer, because your users' real job always wins

Choosing a Startup PR Agency

Vet PR agencies on month-one behavior, writing samples, and lead time — not on big-brand logos.

Leadership6 steps

Clarity and Conviction: Insights, Strategy, Big Rocks

The whole craft of PM in two words, expressed as a two-page narrative every team can recite.

Close the Loop: Intent-Signal Retention Engine

Turn every low-commitment user signal into a trigger you can legitimately fire later.

Competitor-as-Gift Ambition Reset

Turn a competitor's leap into permission to set a goal so ambitious your old way of working can't reach it

Concentric Circles Message Propagation

Spread any message outward from your own desk, one audience ring at a time — never skip a circle.

Core-Behavior Synthetic Training

Ship an AI feature by naming its 3-4 core behaviors and teaching them with model-generated data

Cultural Erogenous Zones

Stop trying to change what people care about; bridge from what they already care about to you.

Sales5 steps

Customer Zero Launch Motion

Deploy a breakthrough product on yourself first, then use your own results as the sales engine.

Damming the Demand

Compete category-to-category against the status quo, never product-to-product against a rival.

Mindset5 steps

Dancing With Your Fears

Price the cost of inaction, then stop trying to kill the fears that won't die — have a conversation with them.

Design Your Day (Calendar as Canvas + Groundhog Day Iteration)

Draw the day you want on the calendar, run it, see what actually happened, adjust, repeat

Innovation4 steps

Embrace-the-Next-Thing Mindset

Greet each new technology wave with 'I can't wait for the next thing' instead of resentment.

Empathize–Create–Evangelize

The three-stage loop for developing a product vision: understand deeply, imagine the solved world, then sell it.

Engineering Financial Space

Convert your job into a contract, cut the burn, and buy back time without a clean break.

Engineers as Discovery Partners, Not Resources

Embed the tech lead in discovery so engineers own the why, not just the what

Self-Mastery4 steps

Equanimity as a Product Skill

Pause before reacting: manage your own reactions instead of trying to control the chaos

Eval-First AI Product Development

Define what 'correct' looks like as evals first; the spec becomes the scorecard, not the build instructions

Leadership3 steps

Failure-as-Default Framing to Create Startup Scarcity

Openly declaring a new bet will most likely fail buys the autonomy and speed a big company otherwise smothers

Find-the-Nugget Angle Selection

Ignore the company's own messaging; find the single thread reporters care about and double down.

Format Malleability: Any Input, Any Output

Stop shipping content in one format — give people the power to remix knowledge into the medium they're in the mood for

Frame, Name, Claim the Problem (Languaging & Point of View)

Use new language to reframe a problem so people see it differently and want a new solution.

Fuel and Engine Model of Marketing

Reduce all of marketing to two questions: do you lack valuable things to say, or a way to distribute them?

Functions and Missions: The Two-Axis Org

Craft and careers live in functions; delivery lives in cross-functional missions with three flavours

Impact Goals Over Activity Goals

Judge a marketing team by big bets and full-funnel conversion, not by how many blog posts they shipped.

Impact-Over-Output Operating Model

Measure teams by validated impact on customers, not by features shipped — and prove the needle moved

Incubate-Iterate-Integrate for Innovating Inside a Mature Product

Build the new experience beside your core product, perfect it, then fold it back in — so you don't break existing customers

Incumbent Anchoring

Position your product as taking on a household-name incumbent, never as a new category.

Keep the Flame Alive: The High-Speed-Train Comms Cadence

Weekly bite-sized, honest updates and 3-minute customer snippets build momentum no one wants to step in front of

KPI + Narrative: The Two-Part Turnaround Drumbeat

Pair one north-star KPI with one relentlessly repeated narrative to reset how a company works.

Self-Mastery6 steps

Laser Mode: Engineering Speed Bumps Against Distraction

Willpower never wins. Move the candy further away than the sandwich.

Lightning Strike Go-to-Market (Supers, POV & Word of Mouth)

Concentrate firepower on super consumers with a reframing POV to ignite word of mouth.

Make Time: Highlight, Laser, Energize, Reflect

A daily four-step loop that changes your defaults instead of making you faster at the wrong things

Manufacture the Story You Belong In

When you're too boring to cover directly, create the news, trend, or data others must cover — and live inside it.

Communication6 steps

Mindful Communication: Converse in the Language of the Listener

Listening, not articulacy, is the core PM communication skill — and it has a method

Mistakes of Commission Over Omission

Doing nothing is the riskiest comms strategy — it hands the win to the status quo by default.

No Linear Success Resilience

Expect the roller coaster: massive issues never stop coming, so build the skin to ride them.

Onboarding as a Retention Lever

Treat onboarding as a habit-and-retention engine, not a conversion funnel — and accept lower conversion to weed out the wrong users.

Opinionated Defaults for Onboarding

Encode what you've learned works into product defaults — make the right choice easy and the wrong choice hard, without removing choice.

Leadership2 steps

Painter, Architect, Surgeon Hiring Archetypes

Match your growth hire to your stage — a versatile painter, a structural architect, or a precision surgeon.

Patience vs Process Diagnostic

When something's stalling, know whether it needs more patience or a process intervention

Pi-Shaped Marketer Hiring

Your first marketer needs two deep spikes plus strategy skills — not one spike, and not a generalist smear.

Pitch the Freelancer, Not the Editor

The hungriest, most reachable writer at an outlet is usually the freelancer — target them, not the busy staff editor.

PMF for Candidates (People, Mission, Financials)

Evaluate a company you might join like an investor evaluates a deal — across People, Mission, and Financials.

Press as a Trophy, Not a Megaphone

The value of coverage is often the 'as seen in' validation you deploy yourself — not the readership.

Marketing6 steps

Pressure = Force ÷ Surface Area

Same effort, narrower target, more impact — shrink your surface area to raise message pressure.

Problem-Solving Story Over Success Story

Editors reject polished wins — lead with the challenge you faced and how you got through it.

Entrepreneurship4 steps

Product-Market Yourself as a Functional Angel Investor

Package your functional expertise into one clear, repeatable value-add so founders pull you into deals.

Prompting-as-Prototyping

Validate a product idea by prompting a model in a local browser before building anything

Entrepreneurship6 steps

Protect the Core Magic: Acquisition Integration

Freeze the loop users love, rebuild everything behind it, and narrate the seams honestly

Publication-to-Story Fit Map

Match each story type to the one publication most likely to cover it, before pitching anyone.

Radical Transparency Operating System

Share every metric with every employee to put everyone's brains on the challenge, not just their hands

Read Before You Retract: AI Incident Triage

When your AI product goes viral for something alarming, diagnose the audience's reaction before you touch the product

Reflect: The Daily Experiment Loop

Treat each day as an experiment you ran, not a gravestone of success or failure

Reset Expectations + Slow Your Inbox

Announce a slower response cadence with a 'because', then actually slow the hamster wheel

Reverse-Engineer the Publication's Mission

Editors serve their audience, not you — decode who each outlet serves, then fit your story to that mission.

Rewrite vs. Restart: The Plane Decision

Never rewrite a live product with a big customer base; do shut down a small-traction acquisition and rebuild it

Scaling Expert Judgment Through Algorithms

Structure your experts' judgment into a signal, train on that — not only on engagement

Scope-by-Time Traps

Box work by a fixed deadline, cut scope to fit, and ship early enough that the feedback is 'this is premature'

Self-Mastery4 steps

Shed Your Superpowers at Each Scale

The strengths that got you here can become damage at the next phase — constantly re-evaluate what your role actually needs

Entrepreneurship4 steps

Ship, Quit, and Learn

Design the smallest thing you can ship that is built to be quit — then let shipping it tell you what's next.

Signals and Nudges for Choice Under Abundance

When every result is plausible, confidence beats relevance — surface glanceable signals, not more inventory.

Influence3 steps

Spending Chips: Breaking Rules Without Breaking Trust

Treat accumulated social capital as chips you deliberately spend to break the specific rules that block a new bet

Tactic-to-Strategy Discovery

Run many small experiments in parallel, then scale the one that breaks through into your strategy.

Technology-First Discovery with a Shape Hypothesis

When you start from a capability instead of a problem, form a hypothesis about its shape before you ship it

The 3-of-500 Months Sabbatical

Frame a sabbatical as 3 months out of a ~500-month working life, and budget 6-8 weeks just to unwind.

The Better Trap

A 'better' copy of an existing solution to a well-understood problem almost always fails.

The Breaking News Dress Rehearsal

Script and run a fake crisis end-to-end to stress test your product and your people at once

The Comms Equation (Goal → People → Action → Belief → Medium)

Back-solve every comms plan from a business goal, never from an impressions target.

Communication6 steps

The Constructive Feedback Script

Deliver hard feedback with observable facts, shared-knowledge framing, and one clear leave-with action

The Contrarian Coverage-Gap Angle

Give reporters the bold opposing view on a trending topic they're already covering positively.

The Daily Highlight

Pick the one thing you want to name as today's highlight, size it to 60-90 minutes, write it down

The Direct Funding Pitch

Pitch funding news by pattern-matching a beat reporter and stating the deal in three sentences.

Peak Performance4 steps

The Energy Audit

After every activity, log energised or drained — then do more of one and less of the other.

The Five-Day Design Sprint

Go from zero to a tested prototype in five days — decide with customer reactions, not hunches

The Five-Legged Stool

Product, eng, design, insights, and marketing as one leadership team — with the PM accountable, not king.

Entrepreneurship5 steps

The Founder Prenup

Talk through values, vision, conflict, decisions, and culture before you co-found

The Four Tests of a Compelling Product Vision

A vision must be lofty, realistic, free of today's constraints, and anchored to a potent problem.

The Four-Touchpoint Stakeholder Intake System

Four standing rituals that turn chaotic user requests into a governed product intake pipeline

The Future Headline

Write the tech-press headline your launch would earn, mocked into the real publication's page.

The GACCS Marketing Brief

A five-part brief — Goals, Audience, Creative, Channels, Stakeholders — to align before you make anything big.

The Going Direct Playbook

Build one owned channel, voiced by a real human, primed before you ever need it.

The Growth Competency Model

Four competency buckets for hiring, evaluating, and balancing a growth team without chasing a unicorn.

Mindset5 steps

The Habit-Anchored Micro-Meditation

Attach full presence to something you already do daily instead of adding a new ritual

The Human Behind the Role

Optimise for being loved, not liked — earn the right to give raw feedback by proving you care first.

The Human Customized Pitch Email

A short, human, story-first email that proves it was written for this one person — not a mass blast.

The Jargon-Strip Clarity Test

Say what your product does out loud in plain answers; if the writing can't match, strip the jargon.

Finance5 steps

The Life MBA Reframe

Set a runway budget, name it an investment in yourself, and give people a socially legible story for it.

The Lighthouse Users Program (10 → 100 → 1,000)

Deliberately serve a tiny, named set of customers through defined stages instead of chasing MAU too early

The Lightweight-First Outreach Opener

Open cold with a one-line 'are you open to ideas?' instead of a full pitch, to earn a reply.

The Magic Test for Control Surfaces

Users ask for knobs and sliders; shipping them literally is how a magical product becomes an ordinary one

The Marquee Mock Exercise

Hand everyone blank App Store screenshot panels and make them draw the world where the problems are solved.

The Once Upon a Time Vision Story

A five-blank Mad Libs template that turns a product vision into a story anyone can retell.

Leadership3 steps

The Orchestra Leader Model

A great founder conducts every function at once, not just the instrument they love to play.

Influence5 steps

The Path Expert Conversation

Find someone a few years ahead on the path you're curious about, and offer them written questions.

The Personal Operating Manual

A working-style 'read me' so teammates know how to work with you before friction starts

The Person Is the Product

Find one person with an extraordinary workflow, shadow them, then compress their expertise into software

The Pre-Firing 'Crystal Clear' Conversation

Before you fire anyone, have the deal-breaker conversation that makes firing never a surprise

The Press-as-Fundraising Filter

Only pursue press when you can name a specific business job it will do — same discipline as raising money.

The Promotion-Denial Conversation

Deliver the no upfront, give the reasons, then paint hope for the future

The Provenance Gate: Scaling Supply Without Diluting the Brand

Let sellers scale by outsourcing production — but only to a partner whose process they actually know.

Communication6 steps

The Repeatable Idea Test (Put the Pill in the Cheese)

Engineer a message people repeat for their own reasons — memorable, effortless, and never an inside joke.

The Solar System Bundle

Anchor a subscription on one sun product, then orbit satellites that share its DNA

Influence5 steps

The Three Concentric Circles of Evangelism

Socialise a vision outward: core team, then stakeholders, then leadership as high as you can reach.

Self-Mastery4 steps

The Three-Hour Work Mindfulness Experiment

Steal three hours from a workday, do something purposeless, and study the guilt that shows up.

The Three Questions to End Every Meeting

Close every meeting with: what did we decide, who does what by when, and who else needs to know

The Transaction Tiebreaker for Marketplace Prioritization

Stop arguing supply vs demand — make the transaction itself the thing every team is accountable to.

The Weekly Focus Ritual

Post what you're focused on this week, and whether last week's focus actually landed.

The 'Why Now' Perishability Test for Internal Pitches

A good business case that lacks a strong 'why now' trigger gets parked; make the opportunity feel perishable

Innovation4 steps

The Wonder-Explore-Make-Impact Incubation Gate

A four-stage vocabulary with 6-pager gates that lets a big company incubate new bets without prematurely scaling them

Leadership6 steps

The Zero-to-One Enclave

Conditions that let a startup-shaped team actually ship inside a big company

Top 10 Things You Should Know

A living, stack-ranked problem doc every PM owns — and every stakeholder must fill in too.

Innovation4 steps

Turn the Recurring Break into a Strategic Moat

When the same problem breaks a third time, stop patching — pull your best people off features and solve it for 100x as a competitive edge

Two-Mode Product Teams

One team, two clocks: ship at the speed of the moment, and build the system between moments

Leadership6 steps

Wartime Product Management

In a crisis: blow up the roadmap, share context, restate the mandate from the mission