Leading AI teams when the roadmap keeps changing

In AI products, the roadmap will change. The job of leadership isn’t to pretend stability — it’s to make uncertainty legible: what we’re learning, what we’re deferring, and what would cause us to pivot.

Write decisions down

Short RFCs beat long meetings. One page: context, options, recommendation, risks. Everyone pulls from the same text when emotions run hot two weeks later.

Protect focus

Parallel bets multiply coordination cost. I’d rather finish one hardening cycle than chase three half-integrated experiments. Saying no is how you preserve depth.

• Weekly clarity on the single most important outcome
• Explicit “not now” list visible to the team
• Postmortems without blame, with follow-up tasks