Three forces converge to break collaboration in product
organisations today — and my AI-powered coaching addresses all three.
01
Most scale-ups stay stuck in “founder mode” past the point it stops working.
Founder mode looks like speed — but it disguises the real
cost: expensive hires under-leveraged, decisions still routed
through the top, the organisation never learning to operate
without the founder(s) in most if not every conversation.
Without an outside view, the pattern persists — and the
organisation can't see what it's missing.
02
Efficient collaboration means different things at different growth points.
Robin Dunbar identified the natural limits of human
coordination. Companies hit a structural breaking point each
time they cross one — at 30–50 people, informal coordination
stops working and leadership becomes the bottleneck; at ~150,
middle management has to emerge and cross-functional rituals
become required; at 500+, departmental structures have to
scale or break. Every growing company crosses these
thresholds. The question is whether you cross them
intentionally — or by accident.
03
AI is redefining what's expected from ICs — and what collaboration looks like.
In 2026, every IC — PM, Designer, Engineer, Marketer,
Salesperson — is expected to deliver more, faster, with AI.
Not just use AI, but operate at a level that wasn't
possible without it. And the collaboration patterns that
worked before AI was a load-bearing operational layer don't
survive contact with the new reality. The teams that figure
out AI-augmented collaboration first will pull ahead. The
rest will fall behind.