Notes on technology, leadership, and decision-making inside complex organizations. I write about the choices that actually matter — not just the tools or the trends, but the judgment calls that determine whether something ships or stalls.
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What Changed in 2020
Looking back: April 2026 Six years out, the changes that began in 2020 look different than they did in the moment. Some things I thought were temporary adaptations turned out to be permanent. Some things I…
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BD Pattern Recognition From the Pre-2020 Era
Looking back: April 2026 The patterns that defined B2B BD in the pre-2020 era don’t all apply anymore. Some do. Some have been reshaped. Some have disappeared entirely. Sorting which is which has been one of…
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The CIO Rotation That Killed My Best Deal
Looking back: April 2026 I’ve told versions of this story to a lot of people I’ve mentored. It’s one of the cleanest lessons I’ve ever learned in enterprise selling, and it cost enough that I remember…
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Why Construction BD Is a Contact Sport
Looking back: April 2026 Of the industries I’ve sold into, construction required the most physical presence. You couldn’t win construction business from a laptop. You couldn’t run construction BD through email and the occasional phone call.…
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The Bonding Company Always Wins
Looking back: April 2026 When I first started selling into the construction industry, I thought I understood enterprise deals. I’d sold into medtech. I’d worked in consulting. I knew about champions, buying committees, and slow procurement…
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The Partnership Kill Criteria
Every partnership should have kill criteria. Most don’t. The absence of kill criteria is the reason so many partnerships drift from active to dormant to forgotten without anyone formally ending them — and why companies often…
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What I Learned About Scope From Billable Hours
Looking back: April 2026 Consulting teaches you pricing in a way that’s painful but permanent. Every hour of yours was sold at a specific rate, and every hour that didn’t get captured on a timesheet was…
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The Partnership Track Lesson
Looking back: April 2026 I spent time earlier in my career in consulting, and one of the things I watched most closely was the partnership track. The lesson of who made partner and who didn’t has…
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The HL7 Problem — A Pattern That Repeats
Looking back: April 2026 Early in my career selling into medical technology, I lost a deal I thought I’d won. Not a deal slipped — a deal lost, definitively. The lesson has shaped how I think…
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Why Medtech Champions Move Departments and How That Shapes Everything
Looking back: April 2026 One of the most durable lessons I took from selling into medical technology was this: your clinical champion will change roles before your deal closes. Not sometimes. Usually. This is true in…