I’ll be upfront: whenever someone can’t stop yammering about leadership, a little voice in my head mutters, “Yeah, all right, prove it.” Maybe you feel the same. We’ve all been bombarded with LinkedIn manifestos and TED Talks declaring the secrets of “visionary leadership,” usually in the context of business, and maybe sports. Boardrooms and locker …
Why are Italian salaries so low? It’s not just the economy
There’s a certain shrug Italians do. A half-defeated, half-practical motion that says, “What do you want me to do about it?” Ask anyone in Italy why the average salary seems nailed to the floor, and you’ll probably get a variation of that shrug, maybe paired with a sigh, maybe a joke, maybe a deeply uncomfortable …
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Does anyone really want infinite optionality?
At 8:07 am the Product Manager sat with their second coffee, staring blankly at the feature flag matrix. Fourteen toggles active. Fourteen. Each one representing a path not taken. Or worse, a path left open, dangling in limbo. “We’ll let the users decide”, they had said in the last sprint planning. But now, looking at …
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“Hit by air”: the Italian fear of breeze, explained
[...] the British do not have a term for a "colpo d'aria". It literally translates as a "hit of air" and seems to be incredibly dangerous for Italians. They can get one in their eye, their ear, their head or any part of their abdomen. — BBC Magazine, 2011 If you’ve ever spent some time …
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Meet the CLEAR framework: RACI’s sharper replacement
Ah yes, another framework. Because clearly what modern work needs right now isn’t better tools or fewer meetings, but one more acronym to toss into the mix. Now hear me out. If you’ve ever sat through a kickoff where four people thought they were “Accountable”, no one knew who was “Responsible”, and the “Informed” list …
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How long can a song live?
Some artistic products age like milk. Others, like wine. And a few, somehow, come back from the dead every decade or so. Music’s no different. Songs vanish. They get buried under newer releases. Some remain timeless because of unforgettable melodies or lyrics that feel like a diary entry you forgot you wrote. Others get quietly …
You, me, and Hegel’s dialectics
Ever notice how talking to certain people feels like breathing? You say something, they challenge it. Not aggressively, but with curiosity. And then somehow, the thing you end up agreeing on wasn’t quite what either of you started with. It’s better. Sharper. That’s not magic. It’s Hegel. Sort of. Now, I’m not saying you need …
What your Apple TV becomes when you start getting curious
Sometime around the turn of the millennium, a strange new object appeared in my life. Metal, vaguely alien, it was bolted to the outside wall of our apartment building in Southern Italy: a satellite dish. Inside, a decoder box materialised in the living room, paired with a remote that looked ordinary enough, until I learned …
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Introducing Product Briefs
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but saying “it’s not on the roadmap” isn’t stakeholder communication—it’s an invitation to a follow-up meeting no one wants. PMs spend so much time thinking through trade-offs, user needs, and priorities… and then fumble the moment they have to explain those choices. It’s not a lack of …
Smart, but doesn’t apply himself
I was always that one child in school. Not so keen to effort. Teachers muttered about wasted potential. Mamma agreed. Friends watched, puzzled, as I made it through the system largely by test-optimised bursts of knowledge acquired last-minute, at the strategically right time. "If only he'd apply himself," they all said. The tragedy of it …