Writing

The thinking, written down

Communication is half the job at senior altitude. A memoir excerpt from the ownership years, plus one essay on building AI systems that work.

The working version is duller and more useful. Every build started as a written PRD before any code, with a decision log recording the options rejected next to the one chosen. The public repository carries 37 numbered decisions and 18 architecture decision records, several superseding or amending each other, so a position change is readable alongside the reason for it.

• Memoir The Mop Bucket MBA (excerpt) From the published memoir on leaving Microsoft to buy a franchise. A trip to Vegas with my son, and the sentence he said to me that I didn't see coming.
• Decision memo Making judgment calls without the analysis Four decisions from one year of running the business, written up against the three-criteria filter I used to make them. One of them cost me $10K I had not planned to spend. Written cold, no AI.
• Article From 25,000 emails to a second brain Digging out of a 25,000-email backlog and building the PARA system that keeps it from coming back, including the AI mistake that almost took the whole thing down with it.