Beyond Incremental: The Journey Revealed

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at 12 Weeks of Writing in Public

For the past 12 weeks, you’ve been receiving newsletters about leadership breakthroughs, scaling yourself, and creating category-defining impact. Last week, I mentioned I was writing a book. Today, I want to show you what we’ve built together.

Every newsletter has been a piece of a larger puzzle – the Beyond Incremental Leadership Framework that emerged from my experience creating a new category with Plum Analytics and now helping other executives avoid the mistakes I made.

The “Aha” Moment That Started Everything

One of my bucket list items has been to write a book.

Ever since I founded my first company, my co-founder and I would joke when things went wrong, “it’s ok, it’ll be a great story for the book.”

But 2025 arrived, and… crickets…

After struggling to find structure for my book writing, I was invited to present the Plum Analytics case study at Wharton.

No pressure. Just present a business case to a room full of world-class business scholars.

I (over)prepared for the talk, and dove deep into the lessons I now see clearly with the benefit of hindsight.

Exploring how we created a breakthrough in the risk-averse academic research market clarified something crucial:

The goal isn’t innovation – it’s breakthrough.

A few days after that talk, I walked into my home office and drew the diagram that became the organizing theme for everything I’ve been writing.

The Pattern Recognition

As my writing progressed, I saw topics emerging around the categories of people, passion, and performance.

But what I lacked was a villain.

Who w

as the villain in the room? What was stopping product leaders from achieving these breakthroughs?

The villain is incremental thinking.

And with fewer tech and PM roles, pressure that AI should transform how we work, and higher bars for advancement, incremental improvements won’t cut it anymore.

As I talked with more product leaders, I kept seeing the same pattern.

Even good leaders get trapped by optimizing within constraints instead of transforming them.

The 12-Week Experiment

So I decided to test something…

Instead of writing in isolation, I decided to build this framework with you. Every newsletter became a laboratory. Every Saturday became a deadline.

I also began talking about what I was writing on LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky. (Connect with me there if you haven’t already.)

What We Discovered Together:

• The People dimension (Scaling Yourself, Peak Performance, Talent Magnetism)
• The Performance dimension (Operating Rhythm, Impact Measurement, Hypothesis Mindset)
• The Passion dimension (Personal Why, Story Power, Passion Sustainability)

The stories some of you told about your personal why and what you are passionate about inspired me, and some of the critiques about what I was writing, kept me centered.

The 3 Breakthrough Intersections I Discovered:

From the beginning, I suspected the real power would come from the intersections between people, passion, and performance.

When these dimensions overlapped, it would create something greater than the sum of their parts.

As I wrote each week, these intersections became clearer and more defined:

People + Passion = Natural Authority

When you combine genuine care for people with authentic personal mission, you get influence that transcends hierarchy

People + Performance = Team Acceleration

When you multiply talent AND systematize performance, teams move faster without burning out

Passion + Performance = Category Creation

When authentic mission drives relentless execution, you create solutions the market didn’t know it needed

The framework was becoming clear, but I realized something was missing: your stories of breakthroughs, not just theory.

But here’s the thing that surprised me most

Writing in public forced me to clarify my thinking in ways that writing alone never could.

Having a deadline every Saturday and knowing you were waiting for the next piece pushed me to move from vague concepts to concrete frameworks.

The real breakthrough wasn’t just the content.

It was proving that breakthrough thinking requires action, not just reflection.

This wasn’t just content creation, it was demonstrating the very principle I was writing about: moving beyond incremental optimization to systematic transformation.

I’m honestly nervous about what comes next

Because now I’m going to ask you to do something that matters.

This framework isn’t complete without your continued participation.

The book I’m writing, Beyond Incremental: The Breakthrough Leadership Framework, needs your stories, your challenges, your breakthroughs.

Because here’s what I really believe

We’re not just writing a book about breakthrough leadership, we’re demonstrating it.

We’re creating something together that none of us could create alone.

In a world of incremental improvements and feature factories, we’re proving that breakthrough thinking happens when passionate people combine their perspectives with systematic execution.

You haven’t just been reading about breakthrough leadership. You’ve been practicing it.

So comment and tell me:

What’s the one breakthrough you’re most ready to make?

Your story could be exactly what another leader needs to hear.

I’ll feature selected stories in the book (with your permission) and share insights that emerge from the patterns I discover.

And if you know someone who’s been stuck in incremental leadership, forward this to them. They might not realize they’re ready for breakthrough, but you’ll recognize the signs, and they’ll thank you.

Together, we’re proving that breakthrough thinking happens through action, not just reflection.

Let’s keep building something extraordinary.