There are two kinds of processes in a company, formal and informal. The main distinction between formal and informal processes is how strictly they are enforced.

How teams scale (grow) is more complex than just a ratio.

Every designer should have a good basis in color theory, typeography, grid systems and economics. I feel that understanding economics is a core skill of designers but one that most don't spend any time on.

When building products, perspective is key.

How much control you have over the design of a product is inversely proportinal to the amount of leverage the product has.

Everthing inside your company is a cost or tax. You must fight against these costs or they will overwhelm you.

Too much time is spent arguing what a brand is or isn't. Most people don't ask, what is the ultimate purpose of a brand? Why have one at all?

Every designer team loves creating design principles but most fail to accomplish having meaningful impact on products or teams.

People get burned out pushing for change because they are exerting energy in the wrong place.

Breaking down problem spaces and solution spaces into known and unknown quadrants can help provide a map to teams. Knowing which quadrant you are in will help determine what you need to do to move towards a good solution for the problem.

Despite your best efforts people will use your products in unimaginable and novel ways. These uses will be both beneficial and harmful.

Value is the underlying driver of everything you design. Understanding how value is created and being able to see it is an essential skill.

All platforms have an application layer where the work of developers can exist. Well layered platforms have clear disctinctions on which applications can do what in the system.

Software can be crudely organized into two classes, platforms and experiences. Experiences are built on top of platforms but their relationship is constantly evolving over time.

Inside a system, nothing matters if there is no method of enforcement.

Modularity is when parts of a system can interoperate without being tightly coupled. This is true in technical systems (code) and human systems (companies). But modularity can not exist until three conditions are met.

An organization's capabilities define what it can do but more importantly what it can't do.

The larger the company, the more likely that two independent teams will start working on the same thing. This can be a waste of resources or valuable learning depending on how it is managed.

The biggest lie people tell themselves is that an effort requires little to no effort. Everything costs something and these costs need to be honestly evaluated.

People are quick to claim they are working on an MVP as an excuse to ship low quality products.

Most disfuntional teams are caused by people (unknowingly) working against each other. They don't row together and waste energy going nowhere.

While people are quick to quote Steve Jobs, I think the most quotable and prescient Silicon Valley CEO was Jim Barksdale.

The word delight has become a staple in the Designer's vocabulary. It has an important place in the design process but too many designers prioritize it too early.

A lot of debates between Designers and other members of the team are prioritzation debates but most Designers approach them as referendums of the quality of the ideas itself. Disambiguate if the debate is about if or when.

Everything is doable if certain conditions are met. Saying no can be tough but framing no as "Yes, if" can help unblock negotiations.

Career decsions can cause a lot of stress. I have used, and given this simple framework to people to help them think through if a given opportunoty is right for them

Products built with constraints are good. Products built only from constraints rarely are. Being honest about what product you are building is a must.

A designer's career is defined by two axes. Their increasing ability to work autonmously and their ability to solve increasingly ambigious problems.

Most team dysfucntion can be traced to not having a shared goal or agreement on what the team is building. A shared Definition of Done needs to exist for a team to build a good product.

Too many companies have adopted cultures of "toxic positivity" where only good news and positive feeedback can exist. Instead, create a culture where bad news travels first.

Experience is the greatest teacher and experience takes time. Don't underestimate the power of time.

A lot of emotional and physical energy is wasted on decisions that can be reversed. Most decisions are not existential and should be approached as such.

In every system, value moves. Everything commoditizes over time and being able to see value and predict where it is moving to is an essential skill.

The goal of all communication is comprehension. Being understood is more important than being complete.

Most people in a company overestimate the power of leaders. Leaders have much less control than people deeper in the enterprise believe. Leader's have three tools readily available to them.

It is easy to imagine features and use cases that would be great for your product. But these features can not be so far out that they require preceeding miracles to exist before they can be valuable.

A manager's job is very simple. Are you pushing your team too hard or not hard enough?

Speculative design is a lot of fun and creatively rewarding but rarely accomplishes what is sets out to do.