10 August 2026
A drawing I put on a whiteboard almost every week.
Thinking
From the intersection of business × product × technology × people. Not generic "10 sales tips" content.
Expanded thinking. The compressed version lives in Principles.
BusinessProductCommercialTech & AIEducationSystems ThinkingLessons Learned
3 of 3 notes
5 August 2026
Don't build the smallest version. Build the version that forces a decision.
28 July 2026
A plan rarely fails because of the numbers. It fails because of the heads behind them.
Things I keep coming back to
Models, questions and frameworks that keep turning up in the work.
One thought at a time
Posts. One observation, one example, one conclusion — nothing more.
Problem
Root cause before solution
Most teams start designing the fix while the problem is still a rumour.
The principle behind it →Systems
Fix the cause, not the symptom
Treating the visible part is how you get to solve the same thing twice a year.
The principle behind it →Systems
Remove before you optimise
Optimising unnecessary work leaves you with faster unnecessary work.
The principle behind it →Product
If it repeats, productise it
The third time you do the same analysis by hand, you are prototyping a product.
The principle behind it →Tech & AI
Don't automate chaos
Automation follows process understanding. It does not replace it.
The principle behind it →Commercial
The best salespeople don't sell
They diagnose. The pitch is what happens after the diagnosis lands.
Commercial
You don't sell a product. You sell less risk.
In complex B2B, the buyer's real question is what happens if this goes wrong.
The principle behind it →CommercialWhy doesn't this sell?
Sales isn't a department
Product, positioning, pricing, service and delivery all show up in the sales number.
The principle behind it →CommercialWhy doesn't this sell?
A quotation isn't a strategy
Sending prices is not the same as explaining why somebody should buy.
Commercial
What's actually being bought?
Nobody buys the software. They buy a different Monday morning.
The principle behind it →Product
The 5-year-old test
If you can't explain the proposition simply, you probably don't understand it yet.
The principle behind it →Tech & AIWhy doesn't this sell?
Show me the workflow
Before software, automation or AI: show me how the work actually moves today.
The principle behind it →CommercialWhy doesn't this sell?
Is this actually a sales problem?
Often it's product, positioning, pricing or process wearing a sales costume.
The principle behind it →Product
I think there's a product hiding in here
Same manual work, same shape, every month. That's a product with no name yet.
The principle behind it →Product
This should NOT be software
Not every process deserves another SaaS. Some deserve deletion.
The principle behind it →Product
Before you build it…
Behaviour, problem, desired change. Features come fourth.
The principle behind it →Problem
One question changed the problem
Six months of stalled work, and the honest answer to one question moved all of it.
The principle behind it →CommercialWhy doesn't this sell?
Maybe it isn't a lead problem
More leads into a broken funnel produce more waste, faster.
ProblemYou're solving the wrong problem
You're solving the wrong problem
The obvious problem is usually the one that's easiest to see, not the one that's costing you.
The principle behind it →Longer pieces, in the works
Articles I'm reasoning through. Ideas, outlines and drafts — published as they land.
Systems Thinkingoutline
IST → SOLL
Understanding the current situation honestly before designing the target state — mapping systems, process, data and people, then measuring what actually changed.
Commercialoutline
Why most sales problems aren't sales problems
Product, positioning, pricing, delivery, trust, ICP and internal handoffs — the places a commercial failure actually starts before it shows up in the pipeline.
Productoutline
Product-driven propositions
How a technically good solution becomes something people understand, trust, use and buy.
Systems Thinkingidea
Complexity is usually an information problem
Most complexity comes from fragmented information and unclear relationships, not from the subject itself.
Tech & AIdraft
Fundamentals before AI
Intelligence on top of unclear process and poor data does not create a good system. Process, structure, data quality, then models.
Educationidea
What teaching taught me about selling
Explaining, listening, asking questions, handling resistance and checking whether anyone actually understood.
Systems Thinkingidea
Systems thinking for non-engineers
No advanced maths required: relationships, inputs, outputs, rules, dependencies, constraints and feedback.
Commercialidea
Why commercial people should understand product
Selling complex products requires knowing how they work and why that matters.
Productidea
Why product people should understand money
Pricing, cost, adoption, sales effort, payback, customer value, opportunity cost.
Lessons Learnedidea
My father thought vertically. I think horizontally.
Deep specialist expertise versus system relationships — inheriting a domain you did not grow up inside.
Productidea
“My phone can already do that.”
How new products get dismissed on a single feature comparison instead of the behaviour change they enable.
Lessons Learnedoutline
Smartmatic — the missing capability
Less about the gap itself, more about the reasoning process that revealed it.
Lessons Learnedidea
Accountability without authority
Being responsible for an outcome without the authority, resources or control to deliver it.
Businessidea
Belief versus evidence
How teams mistake conviction for proof — in strategy, product, sales and AI.
Businessoutline
Copying the output isn't copying the thinking
The visible product is the last layer. Underneath sit methodology, data, architecture and judgement.
Productdraft
Prototype ≠ truth
A prototype proves something can be built. Not that people need it, understand it, use it, or pay for it.
Commercialidea
The €30 template and the €300K problem
Price, value, context, leverage — and why perceived simplicity is not cheapness.
Commercialidea
Buyer-side expertise
Why buyers need enough expertise to understand what they are purchasing in technical work.
Productoutline
Recurring headaches are products waiting to happen
Repeated operational pain as a signal for workflow design, standardisation or a product.
Businessidea
The people behind the product
Support, expertise, decisions, maintenance, trust — everything the customer never sees.
Compressed versions
Root cause before solution
Diagnose before you prescribe.
Fix the system, not the symptom
Symptoms move. Systems don't.
IST → SOLL
Describe what is, before designing what should be.
Product before pitch
A pitch cannot rescue a proposition.
If people don't understand it, they won't buy it
Comprehension is a commercial feature.
Don't automate chaos
Automation accelerates whatever already exists.
Ask what changed, not what was delivered
Delivery is activity. Change is result.
Hands-on education
Need hands-on training for your team — and results?
No slideware. Bring a real problem from your own business. We take it apart, find the root cause and fix it on the spot — with your team in the room, learning the method while it happens.
- Show me your problem — we work on yours, not a case study
- Half a day to two days, on site or remote
- Your team leaves with the structure, not just the answer