John Cutler · 7 min read · Product Strategy
TBM 405: Hope, Context, and Control
Read the original on cutlefish.substack.com →
This essay explores hope, fear, and the tension between control and collective sensemaking in AI-enabled product work, arguing that the most important context resides in the minds and tacit practices of users rather than in systems of record. It warns against over-reliance on 'rollup' legibility and champions rituals and local decision-making to navigate complex product development.
Key Takeaways
- Legibility systems, or rollups, reduce complex sociotechnical realities to neat reports and can mislead product decisions.
- Real context comes from mētis: tacit, locally grounded sensemaking of millions of users, not official frameworks.
- To avoid rollup traps, focus on rituals, interactions, and decisions rather than centralized dashboards.
- Leadership must balance risk reduction and innovation, recognizing how different approaches (e.g., sprint cadences, frameworks) serve or hinder outcomes.
- Stay anti-rollup when necessary: in turbulent times, empower teams with context-aware practices to navigate complexity.
Excerpt
This essay is about hope, fear, AI, and the tension between control and collective sensemaking. I was reading an article about the state of SaaS recently, and came across this line: The data moat surrounding incumbent SaaS / systems of record is likely overstated. I would argue that the most important context doesn’t reside in systems of records, regardless of their size, but in the minds and multimodal work of millions of users over time. What struck me is how obvious this is to anyone (with a systems thinking, complexity-aware brain) in product development, and how counterintuitive it is to…