More of a Guideline Than a Rule
A sprint rule or a say/do ratio is often an easy way to say no without thinking it through. Why frameworks get used that way, what it costs teams, and what it looks like when teams handle it well
Read the field note →Field Notes
Each essay starts with one real decision or mistake, and stays with it until there's something worth passing on.
Each one is a single dispatch, one idea at a time, dated. The field guide is the maintained map they feed into.
Some notes belong to a series: The Generative Culture Series · Finding, Choosing, and Working With a Coach.
Crushed, Problems, Implemented: Where Your Culture Sends New Ideas
An approved idea can still die in process. Westrum's novelty row, from crushed to problems to implemented, and how to design a first try so a rough week reopens the plan and the idea keeps its yes
Read the field note →Consistency Isn't the Model's Job
AI models are built to vary. When you need the same result every time, have an agent build the script that does the work, and keep the model for the work that needs judgment
Read the field note →Shirked, Narrow, Shared: Where Your Culture Puts the Risk
When a dependency slips, who is exposed? Westrum's responsibilities row, from shirked to narrow to shared risk, and the measurement move that puts the owner's name next to the waiting team's date
Read the field note →When the Standard Moves
When agents do the work, your standard moves. How to tell which standards were priced by scarcity and can move, which were priced by consequence and must hold, and how to write the standard where the work runs
Read the field note →The Agent Standup: Practice Note
What the agent standup is, what it isn't, and how to run it every day
Read the field note →The Decision Before You Hire a Coach
Whether coaching is the right kind of help at all: what a coach actually does, when a mentor, advisor, or consultant is the better purchase, and the two questions to answer before you interview anyone
Read the field note →How to Evaluate a Coach Before You Hire One
How to evaluate a coach in three moments, before the fit call, during it, and after the first sessions, and why the working alliance predicts a good outcome better than credentials or personality match
Read the field note →Does Coaching Work? What the Research Actually Says
What four meta-analyses actually show about coaching, why the headline number needs a footnote, what predicts a good outcome, the side effects, and why the ROI multiples cannot be trusted
Read the field note →Low, Modest, High: How Your Culture Shapes Cooperation
Cooperation runs low, modest, or high depending on the culture around it. Why organizations that say they want cooperation still restrict it, what the warm silo costs, and when swarming teamwork backfires.
Read the field note →Pathological, Bureaucratic, Generative: The Culture Underneath the Work
Where Westrum's three-cultures model came from, how it reached software, what the evidence honestly supports, and the permission it grants: to change your culture, accept it, or finally have it confirmed.
Read the field note →Who Is Watching Your Agents?
The human oversight capacity gap is the distance between the oversight your agents now require and the oversight your organization can actually supply, and closing it starts with mapping where that gap is thinnest.
Read the field note →Discouraged, Tolerated, Encouraged: How Your Culture Handles Bridging
Every organization handles cross-team help somewhere between discouraged, tolerated, and encouraged. How to tell which one you run, and how to make the favor economy visible without punishing the people who keep it working.
Read the field note →Shot, Neglected, Trained: What Happens to Messengers
Whether an organization shoots, neglects, or trains the person who brings it bad news reveals which of Ron Westrum's three cultures it actually runs, and what everyone else learns about speaking up next time.
Read the field note →Scapegoat, Justice, Inquiry: How Your Culture Deals With Failure
When something breaks, whether an organization hunts for someone to blame, follows the rulebook, or asks what let the failure happen reveals which of Ron Westrum's three cultures it actually runs, and what accountability really means there.
Read the field note →The Work Still Got Done. So Why Doesn't It Feel Like Yours?
When an agent takes over the labor, the same change lands as a win for one person and a loss for another, and the loss is now measurable. This essay looks at what decides which one a person gets, and why relocating your identity from the task itself to what survives it is what converts the loss into gain.
Read the field note →AI Adoption Was the Easy Part
AI adoption already happened in most organizations, so the real risk moved from the people who won't start to the ones who won't wait, the sprinters. This essay argues you can't govern that fast tail with a communication plan, only by putting the practice into the substrate the agents actually run on.
Read the field note →Expertise Shifted Left. Where Do the Next Experts Come From?
Experts increasingly put their discernment into designing and validating the systems agents run, not into the work itself. This essay asks where the next generation of experts will develop that discernment, now that agents do the formative work people used to learn on.
Read the field note →The Review Is Not a Demo
Most sprint reviews are only demos. What the review is actually for, and how to get the real one back.
Read the field note →The Career Delta File: A Decade of Notes I Almost Lost
What a Career Delta File is, how a decade of keeping one has paid off, what the gaps cost, and why agent memory has to solve the same problem.
Read the field note →The Immense Risks of Superficial Knowledge Gained From Frameworks Like SAFe
Why fluency in a framework like SAFe isn't the same as skill, what that gap costs teams, and what Shu-Ha-Ri explains about the trap of stopping there.
Read the field note →Surround Yourself with Courageous Truth-Tellers, Not Sycophantic "Yes Men"
Why leaders end up surrounded only by agreement, what it costs them, and the specific habits that make it safe for someone to tell them the truth.
Read the field note →Hard Lessons From the Worst Performance Review I've Ever Received
A performance review that blindsided me after years of strong ratings taught me the one rule managers should never break: no surprises, ever.
Read the field note →Hard Lessons From the Worst Manager I've Ever Had
What a self-important first boss taught me about respect, developing people, and why performance conversations should help, not punish.
Read the field note →Tone in Digital Communication: The Leadership Skill Most Managers Never Practice
Why digital messages get read as attitude, and what leaders can actually control about it, now that AI drafts so many of them.
Read the field note →Emotional Acuity: The Leadership Capability Most VPs Never Learned
Why leaders need to read emotional signals fast: the case for emotional acuity at the VP level, and a practice ladder for building it.
Read the field note →Before You Schedule a Skip-Level, Ask This First
Senior leaders often feel an itch to sit down one-on-one with someone well below them on the chart. This essay treats that itch as a signal pointing at a specific problem, not a meeting to schedule before you know which one.
Read the field note →Coaching Agents Isn't Coaching People
A new model made every other agent Ed runs better too, and the credit belonged to the setup around them, not the model itself. This essay asks how much of the coaching craft actually transfers to agents, and where improvement still has to be built by hand.
Read the field note →Comprehension Debt Is a Debt
None of the code here gets written by hand anymore: agents write every line, and the job left is pointing the work and judging what comes back. Comprehension debt is the gap between what a system actually is and what anyone can still account for, a debt that can be managed but never fully paid down.
Read the field note →Nobody Is WIP-Limiting the Human
Agents never sleep, so work in progress no longer has the natural ceiling that human labor used to put on it. This essay borrows the oldest idea in kanban, limiting work in progress, and applies it to the one constraint that never got faster: human attention.
Read the field note →Human-in-the-Loop Is a Coaching Problem, Not a Gate
Approving every move an agent makes feels responsible, until the approver becomes the bottleneck. This essay reframes human-in-the-loop as a coaching relationship, where agents earn autonomy the way people do, instead of a gate every action has to clear.
Read the field note →The Steadiness Test
A leader goes quiet under bad news, and people often read that as composure. More often it's broicism: real anxiety held rather than examined, tending to leak out sideways onto whoever is standing closest.
Read the field note →The Bug That Taught Me About AI Cost Governance
An ordinary bug burned through millions of tokens in a day. The spend cap that finally stopped it was only the smoke alarm. The real fix was the sprinkler system underneath.
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