https://radoptimist.org/en/post/Recent content in Posts on Radical OptimistHugoenSat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/ai-the-efficiency-trap/Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/ai-the-efficiency-trap/<p><em>This is the second piece in a series. The first, <a href="https://radoptimist.org/en/post/ai-marx-was-right/">Marx Was Right About AI</a>, examined the leverage knowledge workers hold over AI deployment — and why mission-driven organizations will capture the productivity gains that extractive ones cannot. This piece operates at a different scale: not the firm, but the monetary system. Not the leverage window, but what comes after it closes. The third piece, <a href="https://radoptimist.org/en/post/ai-the-robustness-imperative/">The Robustness Imperative</a>, asks what kind of AI infrastructure serves workers, organizations, and states — rather than extracting from them.</em></p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/ticketing-systems-are-an-antipattern-for-team-collaboration/Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/ticketing-systems-are-an-antipattern-for-team-collaboration/<h1 id="the-ticketing-system-user-interface-is-an-antipattern-for-cross-team-collaboration">The ticketing system user interface is an antipattern for cross-team collaboration</h1> <p>If your team spends most of its time managing a ticketing system — filing requests, triaging queues, waiting for answers — you have already made your collaboration legible to a machine.</p> <p>That is not a metaphor. Ticketing systems only work for the kind of work AI handles well: routine, well-defined, known destination, repeatable process. If your collaboration looks like a queue, it can be automated. And it will be.</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/ai-marx-was-right/Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/ai-marx-was-right/<p><em>This is the first piece in a series. The second, <a href="https://radoptimist.org/en/post/ai-the-efficiency-trap/">The Efficiency Trap</a>, examines what happens to the monetary system when the displacement described here runs to completion. The third, <a href="https://radoptimist.org/en/post/ai-the-robustness-imperative/">The Robustness Imperative</a>, asks what kind of AI infrastructure serves workers, organizations, and states — rather than extracting from them.</em></p> <hr> <p>For two centuries, the story of automation has followed a simple script. Capital invests in machines. Workers are displaced. The productivity gain flows upward. Repeat.</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/when-doing-stopped-being-learning/Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/when-doing-stopped-being-learning/<blockquote> <p>&ldquo;What I cannot create, I do not understand.&rdquo; — Richard Feynman<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></p> </blockquote> <p><em>In the age of AI, every knowledge worker faces the same hidden trade-off: use the tool to produce, or use the tool to understand. You cannot fully do both. How you arbitrage that tension defines what you become.</em></p> <hr> <h2 id="i-when-doing-was-learning">I. When doing was learning</h2> <p>Before AI, the coupling was tight. To ship software, you had to understand it. There was no shortcut. Writing the code <em>was</em> the learning. Debugging <em>was</em> the understanding. The act of production and the act of comprehension were the same act.</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/ai-peters-principle/Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/ai-peters-principle/<p><em>AI, the Peter&rsquo;s Principle, and the rise of the Senior Operator</em></p> <hr> <h2 id="i-the-principle-accelerated">I. The principle, accelerated</h2> <p>In 1969, Laurence J. Peter observed that in any hierarchy, people rise until they reach their level of incompetence — promoted based on past performance until they land in a role their skills can&rsquo;t support. [1] The ceiling was always there. It just took years to find.</p> <p>AI has changed the timeline. As a capability amplifier — not a capability builder — it makes you faster and more productive at tasks you already understand. The ceiling stays exactly where it was. The elevator just got faster.</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/cicd-is-your-culture/Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/cicd-is-your-culture/<p>Three questions tell you more about your company culture than any values poster, offsite keynote, or Glassdoor review.</p> <p><strong>Do you trust your developers?</strong> Can any engineer push to production without waiting for approval? Or do you require mandatory PR reviews, sign-offs, and staging gates — telling your people &ldquo;we hired you, but we don&rsquo;t trust your judgment&rdquo;?</p> <p><strong>Are you actually customer-centric?</strong> Are developers talking to customers every week and iterating on what they shipped? Or are they building in the dark for months, guessing what users want through layers of gatekeepers, only to discover they were wrong after a massive big-bang release?</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/how-to-escape-the-brown-compromise-trap/Sun, 24 Mar 2024 00:57:47 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/how-to-escape-the-brown-compromise-trap/<h2 id="we-are-all-painters">We are all painters</h2> <p>The brown compromise is an analogy from the painting world. The story goes like this: if you ask a family of five folks living in the same house which colour they prefer, you may end up with a dataset like this one: green, yellow, blue, violet, and I don’t care (yes, this is not a colour!). You may also end up in a family (like mine) where one of the users (me!) is colour-blind and has a very different perception of the world than the other four family members.</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/happiness-a-dance-of-openness-and-closure/Fri, 16 Jun 2023 23:12:04 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/happiness-a-dance-of-openness-and-closure/<h2 id="navigating-the-rhythms-of-the-mind">Navigating the Rhythms of the Mind</h2> <figure class="zoomable-img" onclick="window.__zoomImg(this.dataset.zoomSrc || this.querySelector('img').src, this.querySelector('img').alt)"> <img src="https://radoptimist.org/images/image.png" alt="Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unspash" loading="lazy" /> <svg class="zoomable-hint" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="22" height="22" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round"><circle cx="11" cy="11" r="8"/><line x1="21" y1="21" x2="16.65" y2="16.65"/><line x1="11" y1="8" x2="11" y2="14"/><line x1="8" y1="11" x2="14" y2="11"/></svg> <figcaption>Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unspash</figcaption> </figure> <script> (function() { var dialog = document.createElement('dialog'); dialog.id = 'zoomable-dialog'; dialog.innerHTML = '<img class="zoomable-modal__img" src="" alt="" />'; document.body.appendChild(dialog); dialog.addEventListener('click', function(e) { dialog.close(); }); window.__zoomImg = function(src, alt) { var img = dialog.querySelector('img'); img.src = src; img.alt = alt || ''; dialog.showModal(); }; window.__zoomClose = function() { dialog.close(); }; })(); </script> <p>Our mind operates with two main paradigms. Open or closed.</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/yesterday-i-was-fired/Thu, 08 Jun 2023 22:20:57 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/yesterday-i-was-fired/<p><em>What better moment to reflect on life, life choices and happiness than a day after you were laid off?</em></p> <p>Ultimately, the reasons do not matter much and will not be exposed here.</p> <h1 id="a-one-to-zero-transition">A one to zero transition:</h1> <p>I realized today that quitting your job (without another one planned) or being fired is a 1-to-0 transition. In physics, this is called a <code>non-linear</code> transition. It describes rapidly evolving phenomena like phase transitions and the exponential growth of tiny lifeforms. We don&rsquo;t practice (mentally) this 0-to-1 transition! It is, in fact, the exact opposite of a prevalent mental model of the product &amp; business world. Pether Thiel popularized the 0-to-1 mental model in a well-known <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_to_One">book of the same name</a>.</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/nudge-why-product-managers-should-become-proficient-choice-architects/Wed, 23 Jun 2021 11:49:49 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/nudge-why-product-managers-should-become-proficient-choice-architects/Designing a great choice architecture should be one of your core responsibilities as a product manager.https://radoptimist.org/en/post/dont-ask-for-more-resources-do-more-with-what-you-have/Mon, 22 Feb 2021 06:44:26 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/dont-ask-for-more-resources-do-more-with-what-you-have/Instead of asking for more, focus on helping your team succeed. Ensure you align your goals with the team’s current capacity: this is the…https://radoptimist.org/en/post/the-dark-side-of-authority/Fri, 22 Jan 2021 20:34:04 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/the-dark-side-of-authority/Boost your success and team growth by … not deciding!https://radoptimist.org/en/post/trifecta-product-teams-and-impact/Sun, 20 Sep 2020 07:03:22 -0400https://radoptimist.org/en/post/trifecta-product-teams-and-impact/<h1 id="introduction--definition">Introduction &amp; Definition</h1> <p>In this blog post, we’ll explore the concept of “trifecta” (also called triad in some organizations) that I have seen used successfully in the past both at start-up and even at large scale organizations (ex: Shopify).</p> <p>Let’s start with a definition. The trifecta represents a subset of a product team whose goals are to capture systematically:</p> <ul> <li>value: for the business</li> <li>usability: for the user</li> <li>feasibility: technological, ethical, legal, etc.</li> </ul> <h1 id="valuable--usable--feasible-are-the-trifecta-goal">Valuable &amp; Usable &amp; Feasible are the trifecta goal!</h1> <p>I will use the term craft in this article and would also like to define it: a craft is one or more people inside the product-team with their hierarchy, rituals and specialties. Example of craft includes engineering (sometimes back-end, front-end, mobile), UX (designer, researcher, content specialist, etc.), Product (product manager, product owner, product lead, etc.), data-science (data-scientist, etc.), commercial, legal, etc. Each organization is different and has a different structure to execute its mission. In this article, I will refer to “craft” as the various specialties &amp; hierarchies that exist within the organization.</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/dont-give-us-mvps-we-want-mjps-minimally-enjoyable-products-an-analysis/Fri, 01 May 2020 07:25:40 -0400https://radoptimist.org/en/post/dont-give-us-mvps-we-want-mjps-minimally-enjoyable-products-an-analysis/<h1 id="minimally-viable-products-are-a-myth-or-if-you-prefer-a-mental-model-always-wrong-but-sometimes-useful">Minimally Viable Products are a myth or, if you prefer a mental model. Always wrong but sometimes useful.</h1> <figure class="zoomable-img" onclick="window.__zoomImg(this.dataset.zoomSrc || this.querySelector('img').src, this.querySelector('img').alt)"> <img src="https://radoptimist.org/images/how-to-build-a-mvp.webp" alt="Original Image: Making sense of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and why I prefer Earliest Testable/Usable/Lovable by Henrik Kniberg" loading="lazy" /> <svg class="zoomable-hint" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="22" height="22" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round"><circle cx="11" cy="11" r="8"/><line x1="21" y1="21" x2="16.65" y2="16.65"/><line x1="11" y1="8" x2="11" y2="14"/><line x1="8" y1="11" x2="14" y2="11"/></svg> <figcaption>Original Image: Making sense of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and why I prefer Earliest Testable/Usable/Lovable by Henrik Kniberg</figcaption> </figure> <script> (function() { var dialog = document.createElement('dialog'); dialog.id = 'zoomable-dialog'; dialog.innerHTML = '<img class="zoomable-modal__img" src="" alt="" />'; document.body.appendChild(dialog); dialog.addEventListener('click', function(e) { dialog.close(); }); window.__zoomImg = function(src, alt) { var img = dialog.querySelector('img'); img.src = src; img.alt = alt || ''; dialog.showModal(); }; window.__zoomClose = function() { dialog.close(); }; })(); </script> <p>Very much like Prometheus and the fire or Icarus and the sun they are powerful analogies and ideas that shape our view of the world. A tribute to their power is that, thousands of years after their creation, we still relate to them even if their initial context is long gone.</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/how-to-run-a-why-who-what-how-alignment-session/Sat, 18 Jan 2020 09:01:01 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/how-to-run-a-why-who-what-how-alignment-session/A simple set of questions to remove ambiguity, build team alignment and prioritizehttps://radoptimist.org/en/post/the-abuse-of-tech-debt/Fri, 17 Jan 2020 10:10:01 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/the-abuse-of-tech-debt/There is nothing unique about tech debt: just change. A tech debt classification and initial root-cause analysis.https://radoptimist.org/en/post/i-am-not-a-writer-not-even-a-native-english-speaker/Thu, 09 Jan 2020 19:01:01 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/i-am-not-a-writer-not-even-a-native-english-speaker/How I published 16 articles in 2019 and enjoyed the experience.https://radoptimist.org/en/post/how-reframing-negative-experiences-can-make-you-happier/Fri, 27 Dec 2019 05:53:53 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/how-reframing-negative-experiences-can-make-you-happier/A guide for learning from tough situations rather than simply ruminating on themhttps://radoptimist.org/en/post/one-ring-to-stitch-them-all-and-in-the-land-of-api-bind-them/Thu, 26 Dec 2019 06:01:01 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/one-ring-to-stitch-them-all-and-in-the-land-of-api-bind-them/One Ring to Stitch Them All and in the Land of API Bind Them. GraphQL schema stitching for platform or API PMhttps://radoptimist.org/en/post/how-to-run-a-prioritization-session-using-the-moscow-framework/Thu, 19 Dec 2019 09:01:02 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/how-to-run-a-prioritization-session-using-the-moscow-framework/<p>10x ruthless prioritization</p> <p>A prioritization method to rapidly build consensus on the scope and share with your team and any stakeholder.</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/why-should-you-operate-more-than-one-wine-club/Wed, 11 Dec 2019 07:27:38 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/why-should-you-operate-more-than-one-wine-club/Wine clubs are part of the Direct to Consumer (DtC) trend. They allow the winemaker to send large amounts of wine to a selected group of…https://radoptimist.org/en/post/from-product-to-platform-conclusion-5-5/Sun, 08 Dec 2019 22:01:02 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/from-product-to-platform-conclusion-5-5/From product to platform: A PM journeyhttps://radoptimist.org/en/post/how-to-organize-a-great-team-retrospective/Sat, 07 Dec 2019 14:06:34 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/how-to-organize-a-great-team-retrospective/Retrospective help teams realize their impact and grow.https://radoptimist.org/en/post/from-product-to-platform-platform-revolutions-4-5/Mon, 02 Dec 2019 22:01:01 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/from-product-to-platform-platform-revolutions-4-5/<p>From product to platform: A PM journey</p> <p>How platforms can evolve. Tectonic and violent revolution or more subtle and frequent iterations? How the Pareto principle can help make better decisions.</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/from-product-to-platform-platform-mental-models-3-5/Thu, 28 Nov 2019 15:01:01 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/from-product-to-platform-platform-mental-models-3-5/<p>The journey of a Product manager: from product to platform.</p> <p>Useful mental models to better understand platforms: Superset of knowledge, Ecosystem, Infinite Game, Compounded interest</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/from-product-to-platform-increased-complexity-2-5/Mon, 25 Nov 2019 15:01:01 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/from-product-to-platform-increased-complexity-2-5/<p>Journey of a Product manager, from product to platform: complexity!</p> <p>Platforms are more complex than products. This post highlight the specific domains where platforms are more complex than products.</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/from-product-manager-to-platform-manager-the-partners-impact-1-5/Sat, 23 Nov 2019 04:01:03 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/from-product-manager-to-platform-manager-the-partners-impact-1-5/Platform Managers listen to the voice of the developer.https://radoptimist.org/en/post/never-split-the-difference-the-art-of-contextual-questioning-with-respect-and-empathy/Fri, 19 Apr 2019 16:54:26 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/never-split-the-difference-the-art-of-contextual-questioning-with-respect-and-empathy/A great book to become a better human beinghttps://radoptimist.org/en/post/radical-optimist/Thu, 11 Apr 2019 23:24:37 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/radical-optimist/<p>Why being optimistic?</p> <p>We have to visualize, dream and tell positive stories about the world we want to build. This requires a healthy dose of radical optimism.</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/book-review-sense-respond/Tue, 02 Apr 2019 15:39:05 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/book-review-sense-respond/<p>A great book for knowledge workers. This is a map to help you navigate in our increasingly digital world.</p> <p>Sense and respond, product management, teal organizations, reinventing organizations</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/being-optimistic-is-a-choice/Sat, 23 Mar 2019 22:57:33 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/being-optimistic-is-a-choice/<p>Personal challenge: make a conscient effort to look at a negative situation and find a positive outcome…</p> <p>Optimism in practice</p>https://radoptimist.org/en/post/why-you-should-update-your-wine-club-policies-now/Wed, 14 Sep 2016 10:13:00 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/why-you-should-update-your-wine-club-policies-now/Reviewing an existing or creating a new wine club is an important operation, but, when you run a real-world winery, it is often not a…https://radoptimist.org/en/post/value-chain-in-the-wine-industry/Tue, 16 Aug 2016 19:38:12 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/value-chain-in-the-wine-industry/Wine is a complicated industry with a large and complex value chain and many partners, such as winemakers, agents, wholesalers…https://radoptimist.org/en/post/how-to-start-a-wine-club/Tue, 22 Mar 2016 19:20:22 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/how-to-start-a-wine-club/How to start a wine clubhttps://radoptimist.org/en/post/what-direct-to-consumer-dtc-represents-for-genuine-wine-makers/Tue, 26 Jan 2016 07:12:40 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/what-direct-to-consumer-dtc-represents-for-genuine-wine-makers/Direct To Consumer (DTC) is a major trend worldwide.https://radoptimist.org/en/post/the-pyramid-of-the-product-manager-needs-maslow-inspired/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://radoptimist.org/en/post/the-pyramid-of-the-product-manager-needs-maslow-inspired/A useful and visual mental model that represent the product management role in relation to its environment.