Steve O’Brien

Working principles · 01—32

Mantras.

Hard-won mantras shaped through experience: building Newicon, working with teams and pursuing personal projects.

Some are original, some are borrowed or adapted from people and companies I admire. They are not commandments. They are prompts: useful ways to challenge an assumption, unlock a conversation or find a better next step.

01—08

Transparency and trust

  1. 01.Transparent by default
  2. 02.Leave politics to the politicians
  3. 03.Be responsible, be free
  4. 04.Perception is reality
  5. 05.Questions are the answers
  6. 06.Be positive
  7. 07.The session musician
  8. 08.Toxic behaviour

09—16

Empowerment and growth

  1. 09.Be the change you seek
  2. 10.Be a coach
  3. 11.Give and receive fearless feedback
  4. 12.Continuous learning
  5. 13.Fail fast. Be experimental
  6. 14.Change is good
  7. 15.Make fast decisions
  8. 16.The what, not the who

17—30

Innovation and engineering

  1. 17.The simple, not the complex
  2. 18.All requirements are wrong
  3. 19.Challenge constraints
  4. 20.Don’t #!@$ the customer
  5. 21.Pragmatic, not dogmatic
  6. 22.Use first-principles thinking
  7. 23.Aim to be less wrong over time
  8. 24.I don’t know is a superpower
  9. 25.Build rather than buy core skills
  10. 26.Ask why, why, why, why, why
  11. 27.Automate
  12. 28.Organise around the value stream
  13. 29.Be bold and break things
  14. 30.Make it visual

31—32

Focus and communication

  1. 31.Async by default

  2. Pick up the phone

    Business is about people and relationships. Email and instant messages are useful ways to exchange information, but they do not build lasting relationships easily. It is tempting to stay safely hidden behind them, especially when a conversation feels uncomfortable.

    Written communication strips away tone, expression and body language. Humans fill in what is missing, often with the worst interpretation. A quick “yes” might be intended as efficient agreement and received as “he is angry with me”. When tension appears, another carefully worded email can make the divide worse.

    Pick up the phone. Better still, speak face to face. Hearing the person behind the words makes it harder to descend into “us and them”, passive aggression or imagined motives.

    Async should remain the default for routine work because people need uninterrupted time. But asynchronous communication must never become a place to hide. When tone, trust or the relationship itself matters, have a real conversation.

    Invest in relationships before something goes wrong. A customer or teammate should feel comfortable telling you they are unhappy. That is some of the best feedback you can receive because it replaces polite fiction with an honest conversation and the chance to improve.

    High-performing teams speak difficult truths without ego or drama. Make that possible by treating every message as communication with a human, not an entry in a system.

    • Information and routine coordination: asynchronous.
    • Tension, nuance or relationship risk: pick up the phone.
    • A problem that needs shared thinking: work through it together.
    Close mantra ↑