I’ve spent the last 15 years of my life as a professional in the tech world. I’m currently the lead Product Manager of one of the first Generative AI Enterprise Products (Now Assist for Code) at ServiceNow. I started my career as an business analyst, moved to full-stack development, product analytics & data science at Facebook and in 2016 found my career path as a product manager. I’ve primarily built and run teams as the first PM at startups in the ad-tech, health-tech and AI/ML spaces and most recently have been leading a team writing the playbook for enterprise AI Governance. Outside of work, I train martial arts (Suio Ryu Iai Kenpo), perform as a magician by night and am the proud father of a ~2 year old daughter.

I’m extremely passionate about frameworks, theories and connecting my different worlds to accelerate my own learning. This place serves to start as a brain dump for various frameworks, knowledge tidbits and theories I’ve accumulated thus far in my career; along with advice and/or musings on a broad variety of topics.

What just happened? I set the context. You now know why you’re here (if you still are, if not, how are you reading this?) and what you might get out of this .

There is almost always benefit to establishing the context at the start of a conversation.

Establishing context comes in two primary forms:

Setting context, allows you to set the tone of a meeting and frame the conversation to be one you want to have.

Getting context, is a way to understand another’s perspective via the details and emphasis provided.

As a PM the knack for aligning everyone in the meeting on context concisely, at the right granularity is often the difference between a productive and disastrous meeting. This is where the old adages of “meetings for meetings” comes into play; if you can get and set context appropriately prior to a “decision” meeting, you can better establish context for all involved. Context isn’t white or black either, it’s a way of coloring facts to provide the emphasis you care about. For example, the sentence “I never said she stole my money” has seven different meanings depending on the word you stress while speaking aloud. Similarly the context you set and how you set it can dramatically shift people’s expectations.

As a magician, establishing context is a way to set your audience’s expectations.

In magic, there’s a thought-experiment effect known as the “turkey sandwich” that elaborates on the fine balance. If we are walking down the street together and I randomly pull a sandwich out of my pocket and hand it to you, you’re likely to be extremely confused and not quite likely to eat it. On the other hand, if we’ve just finished a hard day’s work, you’re starving and commenting about how you’d love a sandwich, my offer is more akin to a miracle. The reality is, as in magic in the working world, there’s a fine balance that one has to walk. I might set the context to discuss how hungry I am, leading you to state you’d love a sandwich.

There’s not always a huge difference between being a PM and a magician! Make sure you get or set context appropriately!