Send in the Wolfes: Why Hard Problems Need Fixers, Not Just Leaders

March 27, 2025
Leadership, Organization & People, Technology & Execution
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When an organization hits a wall—be it a product failing in the field, a critical project slipping off the rails, or a big customer walking away—the knee-jerk reaction is often to lean on the leaders already in place. After all, they’re the ones with the titles, the experience, and the authority, right? Wrong. Hard problems don’t care about org charts. Once you’ve got a grip on what’s broken, the real trick is finding the right …Continue reading →

Stop Answering the Wrong Question: Unlock Your True Work Happiness

February 5, 2025
Career, Leadership, Organization & People
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Let’s start with a simple question: What kind of work do you like doing? Go ahead, answer it in your head. I’ll wait. … Did you just describe what you like working on? Or who you like working with? Or maybe you veered into what you like accomplishing or who you like working for? If so, you’re not alone. Nine out of 10 leaders, when asked this question, end up answering a completely different one. Here’s the thing: the dictionary definition of “work” …Continue reading →

How To: Write a Working Backwards Doc

July 23, 2024
Amazon Way, Clarity of Thought, Customer & Product, Leadership, Writing
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This post introduces the concept of Working Backward (WB) narratives and formalizes the mechanism through which a company can drive product development. The WB mechanism is a complete process designed to create a “virtuous cycle” that re-enforces and improves itself as the team participates in it. “Put the customer first, have a plan, create a shared mission, get early victories, remove process, and make it fun.” – tig A WB narrative is a form of …Continue reading →

No Starving Children? The Shocking Truth About Prioritization.

June 6, 2024
Business, Clarity of Thought, Customer & Product, Leadership, Organization & People, Technology & Execution
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Prioritization means making decisions that focus energy and resources on a few things that are at the top of the list, and starving things that are lower in the list. The most important aspect of prioritization is the concept of starvation. In the context of prioritization, starvation refers to the lack of attention or resources given to tasks lower down on the priority list. By definition, as we allocate more resources to higher-priority tasks, lower-priority tasks …Continue reading →

Don’t Sell Ideas – Debate Them

December 17, 2023
Amazon Way, Clarity of Thought, Leadership, Writing
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The practice of selling ideas in meetings can lead to misalignment and superficial agreement. When the focus is on persuasion rather than understanding, team members may agree without fully grasping the implications or having their concerns addressed. This superficial agreement will lead to problems down the line when the complexities of the idea come to light during implementation. If the presenter’s goal is to get buy-in for an idea, dissenting voices may be silenced or …Continue reading →

How AI Will Keep Us Honest

November 16, 2023
Career, Leadership, Space, Writing
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I was a guest on the “Are We There Yet?” podcast. We dove deep into several topics close to my heart: The future of life on Earth, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, leadership, and more. Have a listen and let me know your reaction! Legendary technologist, product visionary, and leadership coach Tigger (Charlie) Kindel winds through the challenges and choices his team made during the early development of Amazon’s Alexa; where AI fits in the continuum …Continue reading →

The Secret to Delivering Outsized Results

October 24, 2023
Amazon Way, Clarity of Thought, Leadership
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In 35+ years of building companies and organizations in multiple industries, I’ve concluded most leadership books are great examples of survivorship bias. I’ve learned a lot from many of these books. But none of them really clued me into the secret of what distinguishes teams that consistently deliver outsized results from teams that are just mediocre. So what’s the secret? Principles. Principled leaders have a set of strongly held beliefs in the how (vs the …Continue reading →

Announcing Kindel Leadership Development

July 21, 2023
Business, Clarity of Thought, Customer & Product, Leadership, Organization & People, Space, Startups, Technology & Execution
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In 2020 started hosting my Free and Open Office Hours as a way to give back and meet more people in the space industry. As I became useful to those in the space industry and gained expertise in the space domain I discovered how fulfilling helping multiple companies with leadership and operational excellence was. To that end, I have pivoted and made Kindel Leadership Development my primary focus. Hire me for Learn more and get …Continue reading →

cek.log -> tig.log (Charlie -> Tigger)

June 9, 2023
Uncategorized
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When I was a baby my favorite eldest sister nicknamed me “Tigger” because I was bouncy and acting “Tiggerish”. Friends and family have called me “Tigger” or “Tig” ever since. When I started my professional career I figured the goofy nickname wasn’t appropriate, so decided on Charlie. After 30+ years of not loving being called “Charlie”, I’ve decided to reclaim Tigger as my name. In the earliest days of email, I signed my emails “-tig”. …Continue reading →

Biases and Fallacies Lead to Smol Thinking

June 2, 2023
Clarity of Thought, Leadership
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All human beings are prone to cognitive biases and fallacies that influence our thinking and decision-making processes. These biases and fallacies can be sneaky and hard to detect, but it’s important that we are aware of them and try to minimize their impact on our lives. By being mindful of our biases, we can expand our thinking and consider new perspectives and possibilities. One way to do this is by looking beyond our own planet …Continue reading →

Engineer the Sh*t out of Errors – Everywhere

May 30, 2023
Amazon Way, Leadership, Organization & People, Startups, Technology & Execution
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Errors. They’re everywhere, but they don’t have to spell disaster. In fact, they’re an opportunity for improvement, if you Engineer the Sh*it out of them. By everywhere, I mean in all functions of a company, not just product or operations. A hallmark of a world-class organization is a mechanism that treats errors as they should be: imperfections in the systems or processes, not personal failings. One of the most famous is Amazon’s Correction of Errors …Continue reading →

Make the Routine, Routine – Blow up Dunbar’s Number

April 2, 2023
Business, Clarity of Thought, Organization & People, Startups, Technology & Execution
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As fast-growing organizations approach Dumbar’s number, they either become forever mediocre or they adapt and become excellent at scaling (in addition to being excellent at delivering customer value). The key differentiator is making the routine, routine by implementing cadence-based mechanisms, which I call Routines.Continue reading →

Breaking Down Innovation & Invention

January 8, 2023
Business, Clarity of Thought, Customer & Product, Leadership, Organization & People, Technology & Execution
6 Comments

A friend recently asked me if I had a Lexicon & Taxonomy for Innovation and Invention. While I do, I realized I’ve never written it down. Here’s my first stab; using the Customer, Business, Organization, and Technology (CBTO) mental model. What do you think? Lexicon: Taxonomy: This lexicon and taxonomy of innovation and invention provide a mental model for understanding and categorizing different types of innovative ideas and approaches. However, simply having innovative ideas is …Continue reading →

Why Mars? For the Dogs!

January 4, 2023
Space
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Mars has long captivated the human imagination as a potential destination for exploration and settlement. With its rugged terrain and extreme conditions, Mars presents a unique challenge and an exciting opportunity for humanity. There are several reasons why we should colonize Mars. First and foremost, it would allow us to extend our reach beyond Earth and become a multi-planetary species. This would not only be an exciting and ambitious goal, but it would also provide …Continue reading →

Torpedo Fuses: The Bane of Classic German Automobiles

June 21, 2022
Cars, Startups
2 Comments

Torpedo fuses in BMW, Mercedes, Audi, and Porsche cars from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s have not stood the test of time. Here’s why…Continue reading →

Be A Volunteer

April 24, 2022
Career, Leadership
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Once you get to the point in your career where you realize a) you’ll be just fine financially (because your resume kicks ass), b) your company doesn’t give a sh*t about you, and c) you know what the Right Thing to do is, act like a volunteer.Continue reading →

I’ve Joined STOKE Space Technologies as an Advisor

May 19, 2021
Space, Startups
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In November 2020, I declared I was going to break into the space industry for my next professional chapter. My hypothesis was my experience rapidly scaling organizations that deliver results, coupled with my expertise in software would be helpful to space companies. The fact that I basically knew nothing about space wouldn’t matter. With the help of a lot of friends in my network, I was quickly connected with dozens of leaders in the booming …Continue reading →

Posting Wrenching Videos

April 18, 2021
Cars
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Every decade I try my hand at being a videographer. My foot surgery led me to giving Premiere Pro a try (I still hate Adobe UIs). A test project: Should I do more garage/wrenching videos?

Advising Rebel Space Technologies

April 8, 2021
Space, Startups
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I’m honored to announce that Rebel Space Technologies has asked me to join them as a Strategic and Technical Advisor. Satellites need to reliably and efficiently communicate with each other and ground stations in the face of severe spectrum congestion, celestial dynamics (these things and the Earth are always moving relative to each other), and changing mission profiles. Rebel’s first product is the Rebel Space Radio, which leverages software-defined radio (SDR) technology to allow RF …Continue reading →

Virtuous Cycles, Platforms, Flywheels, Snowballs, and Tidal Waves

March 30, 2021
Clarity of Thought, Leadership, Platforms, Space, Writing
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I’m working on writing down my thoughts on space. I’ve learned a ton since deciding space would be my next mission. Some pretty clear thoughts are forming, and whenever that happens, I’ve trained myself to write, write, and write to really solidify things. Space is big. In fact, it is, literally, the largest domain. Given the vastness of the domain, I need to formulate a Taxonomy and Lexicon that resonates to gain clarity. I’m a …Continue reading →