I’ve been thinking about my early days as a musician before I switched gears and built my career around technology, design, and product management. Sometimes folks ask me if I still play my saxophone, and I say no. I never quite found my voice as I did working in technology. One thing I did take with me though was being proficient at the art and craft of improvisation. Being good at improvisation means bringing creative thinking and innovation to the table.

A lot of the work I’ve done fits within the realm of what is known as Digital Transformation. But as my practice continues to evolve, I’ve become less comfortable using such a tech-specific lens to every challenge organizations face. I decided I needed to think more broadly at techniques used for Business Transformation to see if this is a better fit. But what does all this transformation really mean?

Teams who collaborate at a high level do so because they know and trust each other. Not just on a personal level, which is great, but how they do and talk about their craft. This includes the steps it takes to accomplish activities like design sprints, and also when to do them, who to do them with, and how activities relate to each other.

Last July, I left my role at Exygy as Director of the Product Management team after 7 amazing years. Having some time to reflex on those amazing years, I have a sense of pride for the work we did together and a respect for the learnings along the way.

I hate to say it, but the answer isn’t always yes. For many years, I’ve worked in and around design systems for organizations that design, build, and maintain digital products. In many cases, they are just not ready for a design system because they haven’t yet become an outcomes-oriented organization that uses agile and human-centered design practices.

When I left my position at Exygy in July, I knew I needed to catch up on my physical and mental health. For the first three months, I dove into healthy eating, improving sleep, meditating, and cycling – all great – but it’s easy for me to slip back into the grind. Focusing on one day at a time keeps me grounded and hopefully will help me turn these habits into life-long practices.

Last week, I caught up with one of my former product managers who gave me feedback that I was great at fostering continuous growth for folks on my teams. This is something I’ve taken very seriously since I managed my first team of frontend web designers back in the early 2000s and it all started with a great manager I had at my first job after college.

Having followed Jeff Gothelf’s Lean, Agile, and Design practices for years, I set out to review his book Forever Employable, published in 2020. But before I could do this, I had to overcome some real fear of professional writing and develop a habit around it.

This was my response when I heard one of my Product Managers mention the phase “Web3” to me towards the end of 2021. Admittedly, after living through dot-com or Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, I have become a bit skeptical of Internet versioning, but he assured me the label was legit. When I attended South By Southwest (SXSW) in Feb 2022 the non-stop attention dedicated to Web3, confirmed that, like it or not, the Web3 label is here. But what exactly is it?

I admit. I’m not always the earliest adopter of new technology. I’m more at the front end of middle adopters. As a techie with a couple of decades of experience under my belt, this was hard for me to come to terms with on a personal level. FOMO, especially in the tech world, is real and there’s always the fear of showing my age. But like a good soup, chili, or stew, technology is often better after it’s been left on the slow cooker overnight to rest and let those flavors mature.