What We Talk About When We Talk About Transformation

For the past few weeks, I’ve been zoomed out. Big-picture tech trends, industry shifts, the kind of horizon-scanning that helps you see where the currents are moving.

But every time I step back like that, I’m reminded of something:
Transformation doesn’t live at the horizon. It lives in the room.

Not in the 5-year outlooks or the glossy strategy decks, but in the micro-decisions teams make on an ordinary Wednesday. In the way a product manager handles a messy backlog conversation. In whether a designer is given enough air to listen, or a developer enough context to care.

The McKinsey report gave us the macro view.
What I want to explore next is the human view—the field notes from actually building products, shifting systems, and trying to lead change when the only thing certain is the next stand-up.

Starting next week, I’ll be sharing an 8-part series:
Building What Matters: Product, People, and Place.

It’s not a playbook. It’s not a framework. It’s a set of reflections from years of working in that messy, rewarding space between strategy and execution.

Because if the last few posts were about where we’re heading, the next ones are about how we get there—together.

Title inspired by Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”—because transformation, like running (or writing, or building), lives in the practice, not the theory.