Why You Shouldn’t Listen to Me

But Maybe Do Anyway

Leadership isn’t about having all the answers, and this blog isn’t either. After 20+ years of leading teams in software R&D, I’ve been wrong many times. And the list of things I wish I knew more about grows every day.

I’m not here to offer a one-size-fits-all playbook for leadership. My ideas are my own, shaped by my personality, strengths, weaknesses, successes, failures, and a lot of reading and reflection. They’ve worked for me—most of the time—but your path may look nothing like mine. That’s the beauty and frustration of this work. Leadership is personal. Context matters. And blindly following “best practices” can miss the wisdom and nuance they were created to share.

Take psychological safety, for example. I used to think it meant keeping my team harmonious. Then I read Amy Edmondson's The Fearless Organization and realized I’d misunderstood. True psychological safety fosters openness and honesty, sometimes leading to messy, uncomfortable disagreements. Our challenge as leaders is coaching and trusting the team to resolve dissonance into better outcomes.

Or autonomy. I’ve spent my career advocating for self-organizing teams and agile processes. I still believe they’re essential for efficient innovation at scale. But I’ve also seen situations in which the business needs everyone rowing in time, with a top-down leader setting the direction, the rhythm, and the plan.

Even principles I’m passionate about, like those in Nicole Forsgren’s Accelerate, aren’t universal. The research is compelling, and it resonates with my own experience, but I’ve seen teams succeed with very different playbooks. Leadership isn’t about worshipping frameworks; it’s about understanding when, and how, to apply them.

And that brings me to this blog. Over the years, I’ve assembled a toolkit of principles, tools, insights, and practices that have helped me navigate R&D leadership. I’m sharing them here because I believe they might help you too. But these aren’t rules, and I’m not here to preach. I’m inviting you to join me in the same messy, challenging, and rewarding process that has shaped my own journey.

You’ll see my opinions here, and they’ll be strong ones. I’ll wrestle with contradictions, explore new ideas, share some pain, and hopefully learn something along the way. I hope you’ll do the same. Take what resonates, question what doesn’t, and let’s figure this out.

Because I don’t have all the answers. But I’ve learned how to navigate complexity, adapt to new contexts, and embrace the uncertainty that leadership demands. Maybe that’s enough: starting a conversation that helps us all grow, together.