Mechanisms are complete processes—owned by a leader, built around a tool or ritual, broadly adopted, and continually inspected and improved—that make the right behavior the default. Rather than hoping people do the right thing, great leaders engineer processes that guarantee it.
You don’t scale excellence by inspecting outcomes—you scale it by designing systems that send the right signals. These are called Fitness Functions.
The right kind of feedback can transform teams, while the wrong kind erodes trust and performance. SBI, which stands for Situation–Behavior–Impact, is a structured way to give feedback that’s clear, non-defensive, and actionable.
Terminal.Gui is a .NET UI framework for cross-platform terminal apps. It started life as gui.cs, created by Miguel de Icaza. Miguel, being Miguel, casually dropped a complete cross-platform console UI stack into the world, made it … Read more
Here’s a simple yet powerful exercise, the CBTO Stack Rank, designed to force you into uncomfortable clarity about where you really stand as a leader.
Organizational Silos Are Like Gravity. You Don’t Hope Them Away. You can’t culture-doc them into nonexistence. You Engineer Around Them.
Every great org starts the same way: a handful of people with conviction, urgency, and the energy of a shared mission. The best ones are driven by clarity of purpose, crisp principles, and a team that … Read more
The Single-Threaded Leader (STL) model was born inside Amazon and became foundational to how we scaled and delivered customer-obsessed innovation—especially in the early years of Alexa. I wrote the original doc that helped crystalize the model, … Read more
There are three states a leader can be in relative to people management: 🔧 The Builder This is the Individual Contributor (IC) track. Builders go deep on the T, C, and B parts of Customer, Business, … Read more
The first rule of skills is simple: know the skill exists. That sounds obvious, but most people—especially growing leaders—aren’t intentional about skills. They focus on outcomes. Goals. KPIs. But they don’t stop to ask: What specific … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more