My Operating Model

These reflect my actionable operating principles: questions I use to change decisions and behavior on a day to day basis at Wispr.

1. What’s the desired outcome and the fastest path to it?

• What outcome are we trying to get to? What would count as success?
• What can we cut, simplify or reuse to get there faster? Don’t reinvent what already works.
• Optimize for time to the ultimate outcome. Often that means shipping incrementally, learning quickly, then making what works dependable.

2. Who’s the DRI?

• Can everyone involved name the same directly responsible individual (DRI)? The DRI owns the outcome and makes the call.
• The DRI notices when work stalls or the experience breaks, drives the fix and stays responsible after shipping. Nothing should dangle.
• Keep teams small and decision makers few. Hold one another accountable and flag commitments at risk before they slip.

3. Diagnose the problem

• Can you explain the problem without naming your proposed solution?
• If we’re moving too slowly, why? Check whether the work needs simplifying, whether we’re solving the right problem and what’s actually blocking progress.

4. Assume good intent and approach conversations with curiosity

• If someone says something that makes no sense to you, find out what they see that you don’t. Understand the disagreement, then disagree and commit.
• Use VIEW: vulnerability about your uncertainty; impartiality about whose idea wins; empathy for the other person; wonder about what you’re missing.
• Use SBIA for feedback: name the situation, the specific behavior, its impact and the action to continue or change.

5. Don’t ship AI unless you understand it yourself

• Can you explain what you’re shipping, why the important decisions were made and how you know it works?
• You don’t have to read every line of code. You do have to understand the work yourself. Diagnose a process before automating it.

6. Observe customer emotion

• What did the customer feel? What need is behind that feeling? What’s causing it?
• Customers are never wrong about what they feel. Notice your own friction too; you’re a customer. Use the feeling to diagnose the problem rather than taking the requested solution at face value.

7. Increase the talent density

• Does this hire raise the bar? Resist the urge to put butts in seats.
• Increase talent density by coaching the people already here. Be specific about what better looks like and help them get there.
• Use the keeper test: if this person wanted to leave, would we fight to keep them? If not, decide how to coach them, change their role or help them find the right landing place.

8. Play to win

• Be explicit about what winning means and what it will take. If the current plan won’t get us there, change it.
• If we say we care about growth, our priorities, time and staffing should reflect that.

9. Push the frontier

• How do we want the world to feel? Work backward from that experience to what we need to build.
• Push the frontier on every surface. Reuse what works, and invent where the experience we want requires it.