Archive

#59 My Contempt for Management Consultants

2001. Poland, a few miles from the old East German border. A hotel that felt more like a bunker. Paint peeling from the walls. Spring, but the thermometer in the room showed 16 degrees. I'm on assignment from Acando, the consulting firm I work at. We're

#58 Håna oss, vi rör oss, ni står still

Sometimes I do things I don't really dare to do, or things that just feel... a bit cringe. Strategic decisions that could go wrong, step onto a stage, or post something corny on LinkedIn. Things where I risk failing or losing face, but that still feel important enough

#57 When a Chairman Builds Software, the Moat Is Shrinking

I was a few minutes early. Martin Grimberg, the Vizcon chairman, was already at the table. Before I'd even sat down, he turned his laptop toward me. – I'm building a board management tool, he said. I laughed. Three days earlier, I'd done exactly the

#56 Stepping Aside: Nathalie Tindsjö is the New CEO at Ambition

– I can lead this company for five years. After that, someone else should take over. In February 2021 Jane Murray, Cecilia Brunemark and I started Ambition. Offices were closed, all meetings were online, the pandemic had turned an entire industry upside down. Not entirely unlike October 2002, when my co-

#55 The Return of the Generalist: Broader Skills and Smaller Teams

Two weeks ago I was back at Malmö University. Same advisory board, different conversation. Last time I was there I talked about business acumen, understanding people, and ethics. The things that were true 30 years ago and are still true now. This time I wanted to talk about how something

#54 You Are the Raw Material: The Recruitment Process Was Never Designed for You

She'd been a senior UX lead for seven years. Two rounds of layoffs in three years, neither her fault. Sharp, experienced, the kind of designer most teams would be lucky to have. We'd been talking for half an hour. She asked me what I thought she

#53 Pax Silica: Why Are We Choosing to Depend on Bullies?

This is an unusual issue. The last two weeks have been unusual too. Most of my free time since that text to Per has been spent trying to understand what Sweden just signed, and why. There are more links than usual. The claims matter and I want you to be

#52 We've Been Designing Learning Backwards (Play It Forward)

I got a new book in my inbox last week. Play it Forward: En bok om lärandets drivkrafter, the result of a multi-year research collaboration initiated by the Swedish government, written and edited by Katarina Pietrzak, researcher and strategist at RISE. 214 pages. Fourteen chapters. Interviews with researchers, educators,

#51 Capitalism Will Save Your Design Career (Eventually)

– It’s been almost three years now... Long enough for a "temporary" downturn to start feeling permanent... Last week, I sat down with an entrepreneur I’ve known for a while. He’d just had to shut down part of his digital agency. We talked about where we

#50 Designing the Designers We Need

– You have the wrong talk on the website. The right talk is How to Fight Fascism. A message from Mike Monteiro. The day before From Business to Buttons 2017. The day after, he was supposed to give a talk called Let Us Now Praise Ordinary People. That's odd.

#49 Are Role-Based Agents the “Faster Horses” of AI?

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Henry Ford is often credited with that line. He probably didn’t say it. But the story survives because it captures something true. People can usually describe their pain, but they usually don’t have the

#48 Build vs Buy: How AI changes enterprise software and the need for local product talent

When AI services make building software cheaper, what happens to the old “build vs buy” decision, and what happens to the need for product and design competence inside the companies that usually just buy software? A few weeks ago I was in a meeting. The topic was a new procurement

#47 My Digital Workplace Is a Mess

My digital workplace is a mess. Not the charming kind you can romanticize as “creative chaos”, but the kind that slows me down.  I can no longer easily find what I was writing a week ago. Not because the text is gone, but because it’s buried in a pile

#46 I Probably Didn’t Like You at First

If we are close colleagues, or friends, I probably didn’t like you at first. The first time I met Ingrid Domingues, Filip Månsson, Cecilia Brunemark, and a long list of others, I did not like them. Not in a dramatic way. Just a sense that something was off. Too

#45 You Belong 
on a Board: 
A practical path for CX/product leaders to the boardroom

Jeff Bezos is said to keep an empty chair at the board table to represent the customer. It’s clever. It’s also telling, and, frankly, a bit of an insult. If the customer really is our most valuable asset, why symbolize their voice with an empty chair instead of

#44 MailMe: Simplicity at its finest

I’ve always loved simple things that make life smoother. Tools that strip away noise, and zero in on the core problem. Tools that just work. A few months ago, we bought a summer house out in the middle of nowhere. It’s quiet. Peaceful. On the days I go

#43 AI in User Research: Synthetic Personas and Generated Insights

AI-generated personas and insights are starting to pop up in my LinkedIn feed, often pitched as clever ways to speed up user research. But if you’re aiming to build something better than average, these shortcuts won’t save you time. They’re more likely to lead you in

#42 North London Forever: Fitting In and Finding Yourself

What makes an interest real? Is it something we’re born with, or just the result of encouragement, habit, or the need to belong? How often do we pretend to care just to fit in, and then, somehow, end up actually caring? Interests aren’t fixed traits, they’re formed

#41 The Feature Race to Nowhere

“Did you see? Our competitor just launched this new feature. We need something similar, and we need it fast!” It happened again. A few weeks ago, I was in a meeting with a client in the health space, and there it was, the same reflex. The feature race. You’d

#40 Wired for Belonging: Faith, Platforms, and the New Gods

As humans, we are wired for meaning. For belonging. For being part of something bigger than ourselves. Historically, religion filled this void for many. My grandparents, like most of their generation, attended church regularly. My parents did too, at least in their youth. Like many in Sweden, I was born