Beyond Familiar Waters
For experienced leaders navigating situations their experience never prepared them for.
I came to this book through years of engineering leadership, coaching conversations, and watching smart, capable people meet problems that did not behave like the problems they had solved before. The old maps were not useless. They simply stopped being enough. This is a book about learning to lead when yesterday’s maps no longer work.
We are drowning in information
while starving for wisdom.
―
E.O. Wilson
I’ve returned to this quote countless times over the years. Every time I did, it seemed to explain another leadership challenge I couldn’t quite put into words.
Every day we have access to more information than any generation before us. We read books, listen to podcasts, attend conferences, experiment with AI, and collect frameworks that promise to make us better leaders. Yet the conversations I have rarely revolve around finding more information. More often, they’re trying to make sense of everything they already know. They wonder which advice applies to their situation, which instincts they should trust, and how to make decisions when there isn’t a clearly right answer.
I believe leadership has become more contextual. Experience still matters. Wisdom still matters. Perhaps more than ever.
Beyond Familiar Waters is my attempt to explore those waters. I don’t expect to arrive with all the answers. My hope is something a little more modest: to offer a way of thinking that helps leaders navigate unfamiliar situations with greater clarity, curiosity, and judgment.
Questions worth asking
When familiar waters stop being familiar, leaders rarely need another framework first. More often, they need better questions.
The conversations behind this book kept circling around the same tensions: smart people working hard, experienced leaders reaching for tools that used to help, teams trying to make decisions while the ground kept shifting underneath them. The questions below are the ones I kept returning to, because they reveal where leadership becomes more than execution.
This book is for you if…
- You have enough experience to know there are rarely simple answers, yet somehow leadership keeps becoming more complex.
- You’ve caught yourself wondering whether the advice that worked five years ago still applies today.
- You spend more time navigating people, trade-offs, and uncertainty than solving technical problems.
- You believe AI will change leadership, but not replace the judgment, curiosity, and humanity it demands.
- Most of all, you’re looking for clarity without pretending complexity doesn’t exist.
The questions I couldn't let go of
I didn’t set out to write a book about leadership. In fact, I needed a lot of push from my friends to even start contemplating it.
But… As an engineering leader and later as a coach, I slowly realized that most of the difficult problems weren’t technical at all. They emerged where technology met people, organizations, and the messy reality of change. Once I started seeing that pattern, I couldn’t unsee it.
That realization, step by step, changed the way I thought about leadership. It also changed the questions I started asking. Beyond Familiar Waters is my attempt to explore those questions, not because I have all the answers, but because I believe they’re becoming more relevant with every passing year.
Come closer to the writing process
Join the Early Reader List if you’d like occasional updates, early excerpts, behind-the-scenes notes, and the launch announcement when the book is ready.
FAQ
When will the book be published?
The current working target is early 2027. I’m still writing and shaping the manuscript, so I’m treating that date as a direction rather than a promise carved into stone.
What is the book about?
Beyond Familiar Waters is about leading when experience alone is no longer enough. It explores how experienced leaders can navigate complexity, uncertainty, AI disruption, organizational change, and their own familiar patterns with clearer judgment.
Who is the book for?
It is written for experienced leaders, especially people working in technology, product, engineering, startups, scaleups, or organizational change. You do not need to be in tech to find it useful, but many of the questions come from places where people, systems, and fast-changing technology meet.
Is this a book about AI?
Partly, but not only. AI is one of the forces making familiar leadership maps less reliable. The deeper question is what happens to judgment, trust, decision-making, and sustainable leadership when the environment changes faster than our habits.
What will I receive if I join the Early Reader List?
You’ll receive occasional updates about the writing process, selected excerpts, behind-the-scenes notes, and launch news when the book is closer to publication. I’ll keep it thoughtful and low-noise.
Will early readers get full chapters?
Possibly selected excerpts, but not necessarily full chapters. I want to share enough for the ideas to be useful while still protecting the shape of the manuscript as it develops.
Is this connected to the blog?
Yes. The book grows out of years of writing, leadership work, coaching conversations, and lived experience. Some themes began in essays, but the book is not a collection of blog posts. It is a more coherent exploration of the patterns underneath them.
Can I invite you to speak about these ideas?
Yes. I speak about leadership in uncertainty, AI and organizational change, sustainable leadership, and the human side of technical systems. If that sounds relevant for your team or event, you can reach out through the contact page.