Moving up the vendor value chain. Getting to the vendor tipping point.
Elevate your agency by mastering the vendor value chain to become indispensable and flexible, securing your position in the market.
Duration: 0:39 | Size: 0.7 MB
If your agency is towards the low end of the client vendor value chain, and by that I mean execution-focused, your services are always in danger of being unecessary. How can you avoid that?
The goal is to become indispensable in theory and flexible in execution. Specifically, you should move up the vendor value chain until you reach a node that is never not required. And then park your focus at that node. If you get all the strategy from that node, then you can control the execution downstream. But, you have to remain flexible, not favoring any particular mode of execution, in order to capture all the downstream projects, too.
Why customer tools are organized wrong
This article reveals a fundamental flaw in how customer support tools are designed—organizing by interaction type instead of by customer—and explains why this fragmentation wastes time and obscures the full picture you need to help users effectively.
Infrastructure shapes thought
The tools you build determine what kinds of thinking become possible. On infrastructure, friction, and building deliberately for thought rather than just throughput.
Server-side dashboard architecture: Why moving data fetching off the browser changes everything
How choosing server-side rendering solved security, CORS, and credential management problems I didn't know I had.
The work of being available now
A book on AI, judgment, and staying human at work.
The practice of work in progress
Practical essays on how work actually gets done.
The inbox nobody reads is the one that matters
Every organization has a monitoring system that works perfectly and reports to nobody. The gap between having information and acting on it is where most failures actually live.
The best customers are the first ones you turn against
Every subscription makes a bet that most customers won't use what they're paying for. The customer who closes that gap becomes a problem to be managed.
Delegation without comprehension is just prayer
The organizations that survive won't be the ones that automated the most. They'll be the ones that figured out what to stop delegating.
Your sales team should take a page from marketing
Boost your sales by leveraging marketing insights. Discover how collaboration can enhance lead understanding and drive more conversions.
Junior engineers didn't become profitable overnight. The work did.
We've been celebrating that AI made junior engineers profitable. That's not what happened. AI made it economically viable to give them access to work that actually builds judgment, work we always knew
I don’t want to have an experience or a partnership with vendors. I just want to get my stuff done.
Discover why sometimes a straightforward transaction is preferable to deep partnerships and experiences with vendors in today's business landscape.