Category: Leadership & Teamwork
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Building Luna: Part 1 – A Machine Learning (Through) Experience
Photo by Guzmán Barquín on Unsplash Readers following the Building Aria series probably expected Part 6 last weekend. I did too… until I made myself stop. Not from burnout or technical failure, but from a deeper question: what would actually be worth building next? So I imposed a two-week pause. No new features, no late-night…
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Building Aria: Part 4 – The Alignment Mirror
Photo by Avery Evans on Unsplash Over the previous three entries, Project Aria has crossed three clear thresholds, though none of them felt clear while I was in the middle of them. In Part 1, she found her voice: more than a demo, she became a partner in conversation that carried beyond a single reply.…
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The Architecture of Data Maturity: A Cultural and Technical Roadmap
Photo by Alex wong on Unsplash The alert arrived quietly, more of a whisper than a siren. A notification slid across the architect’s screen: Inventory anomaly detected—supplier feed variance exceeds threshold. Recommended action: divert 5% of allocation to alternate distribution center. It wasn’t the first time such a discrepancy had occurred. In fact, years ago,…
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Your Infrastructure Is Lying to You
Photo by Brian Kelly on Unsplash Every company that grows quickly builds roads to connect where they are with where they want to go. At first, those roads are simple: gravel tracks carved out of necessity, meant to get people and goods moving with minimal delay. They’re not elegant, but they’re fast. They serve their…
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Trading Applause for Alignment
Photo by Headway on Unsplash Author’s Note This piece explores a subtle but important distinction: the difference between applause and alignment. It’s not written as a critique of any one leader or culture, but as a reflection on a pattern many of us have observed and, at times, participated in—the slow drift from substance to…
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The Cost of Ownership
Photo by nikko macaspac on Unsplash Author’s Note This piece may come across sharper than most. Perhaps that’s intentional—but the intent is not unkind. The goal here is not to condemn managers, critique peers, or cast blame on systems that evolved in the absence of reflection. Rather, it’s to illuminate a pattern that often remains invisible until it’s…
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Bridges, Not Walls: The Strategic Value of Operational Transparency
Photo by Denis Panfilov on Unsplash Title note: This piece is about organizational transparency and cross‑functional translation. The title comes from an internal tool I built (“Bridges, Not Barriers”), not from any current political event or protest. Lighting the Valley—How Transparency Built a Revolution The first lightbulb flickered to life in a Tennessee farmhouse in…
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Beyond Shareholder Value
Photo by Alexey Marchenko on Unsplash Re‑centering Fiduciary Duty on People, Planet, and Sustainable Profit Quick take: Companies that view fiduciary duty only through a shareholder‑value lens are leaving growth, trust, and resilience on the table. When leaders widen the aperture to include employees, customers, communities, and the environment, they unlock durable advantage and deliver…
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The Changing of the Tides: Navigating Work in the Age of AI and Erosion
Photo by Samuel Scrimshaw on Unsplash A Rising Undertow Last spring, the National Association of Business Economics surveyed 600 hiring managers and came back with a jaw‑dropper: more than half said applicants “couldn’t summarize a one‑page memo without AI help.” In the very same quarter, ChatGPT crossed a billion monthly users. If you picture modern…
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Modular Minds: How Technical Thinking Makes Stronger Organizations
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash Author’s Note Over the past few weeks we’ve talked about the dollars saved by building in‑house—how skipping a custom web‑app quote, avoiding a six‑figure SaaS renewal, or shipping a Power BI fix in days instead of weeks pays real, measurable dividends. We’ve also discussed the value of recognizing the people doing…
Abstract Foundations 