This Week’s Updates

Enabling the Team

Why Effective Leaders Get Branded As Problems by Luis Velasquez
Effective leaders can be labelled difficult when their pace, clarity or decisiveness exposes tensions the organisation has not resolved, so companies need to examine role expectations, team readiness and organisational context before treating the leader’s behaviour as the only problem.

Exception, Presence, Delegation by John Cutler
Healthy organisations balance clear exception signals, leaders who stay close enough to understand the work, and genuine delegation, because dashboards without context, involvement without autonomy, or empowerment without support all create different forms of organisational dysfunction. 

Product Direction

Prioritization Happens In Layers by Ant Murphy
Prioritisation becomes easier when teams make choices in layers, starting with vision, strategy and outcomes before comparing opportunities and solutions, so the backlog reflects clear direction instead of becoming a substitute for it.

The Product Lifecycle Is Broken by Ravi Mehta
As AI makes working software cheaper than specs and mockups, product teams can use prototypes throughout discovery to explore options, align earlier and validate decisions, replacing staged handoffs with tighter collaboration around what should actually be built.

Continuous Research

AI Needs a Human Touch: Why Researchers Should Lead AI Evals by Nathan Reiff
Researchers are well placed to lead AI evals because they connect user needs with human, LLM-as-judge and code-based evaluations, helping teams measure AI quality against real product value rather than model performance alone. 

AI As An Active Participant: What Happens When Services Start Making Decisions by Natália Tôrres
As AI begins making decisions inside services, researchers need to examine where it shapes access, risk and support, helping teams uncover harmful consequences early and build stronger oversight, transparency and routes for people to challenge automated outcomes.

Continuous Design

From Faster Pencil To AI Experience Architect: A Designer’s Path by Patrick Neeman
As AI makes design execution faster, designers create more value by moving upstream into workflow design, systems thinking and organisational decision making, shaping how models, people and processes work together rather than simply producing more screens.

Designing The Human+AI System by Daniel Ruston
Designing AI products means looking beyond the interface to shape the full system of human judgment, model behaviour, context and feedback, so teams create clear collaboration between people and AI rather than simply adding automation to existing workflows.

Continuous Development

Humans And Agents In Software Engineering Loops by Kief Morris
Rather than leaving agents unsupervised or reviewing every line they generate, engineers should work “on the loop” by designing the specifications, tests, quality checks and feedback systems that let agents produce reliable software and improve over time.

The State Of AI Governance In 2026 by Kelsey McKeon
AI-powered tools are spreading faster than organisations can see or govern them, so leaders need centralised security, access controls and ownership that let teams keep building quickly without leaving production risk to policies that people may ignore.

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Who Controls The Customer Journey
In Agentic AI?

Don’t Miss This Talk At UXDX San Francisco!

As AI systems begin recommending, planning, purchasing and completing tasks on behalf of people, the customer journey is becoming less visible and more automated. That can reduce effort, but it also raises important questions about trust, consent, transparency and when users should be asked to approve an action.

This panel will explore how leading consumer organisations are designing agentic experiences that feel helpful rather than intrusive. Rachel and Purvi will discuss how to decide what should be automated, build effective oversight and intervention mechanisms, and create products that deliver convenience while keeping users informed, confident and in control.

FREE COMMUNITY EVENTS 

Video Of The Week

Why AI Makes Strong Teams Stronger
And Weak Teams Weaker

AI does not automatically make teams more effective. It amplifies how they already think, make decisions and take responsibility. In this online community event, Oleksandra Bernatska, Lead Product Manager at Boosta, shares insights from a cross-functional team using AI in its daily work, including where it genuinely speeds up thinking and where it can quietly weaken it.

The session explores why mature teams often become stronger with AI, while weaker teams accumulate hidden risks around quality, accountability and decision making. The focus is not on tools, but on the team culture, working habits and cognitive responsibility needed to use AI well.

Want to go into how careers and leadership are shifting as AI compresses the ladder? My ebook Managing Your Career In The Age Of AI explores how to build judgment, relationships, and influence in a world that keeps trying to automate the surface of the work.