This is a blog about concepts, systems, strategies and tactics for honing your professional acumen and overall effiacy in overcoming business challenges.https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/the-pendulum-problem/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/the-pendulum-problem/I once ran a team so tightly that they stopped thinking for themselves. Not because they were passive people, because I always had them wait for me. I've written before on accountability being core to how I operate. This extreme ownership means that I take 100% responsibility for myWed, 25 Mar 2026 08:00:00 GMTBloghttps://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/managing-meetings-better/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/managing-meetings-better/We have all felt the meme-ified sentence "this meeting could have been an email". We all sit in a bunch of meetings every day and all know the feeling of only being able to get concentrated work done after 6.00 PM. I think there are some really simpleSun, 27 Jul 2025 19:26:00 GMTBloghttps://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/principles/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/principles/I’ve always been drawn to people who seem to have a clear compass. You know the type, right? They speak with conviction. They make hard decisions without a lot of drama. They seem to always know where they stand. And for a long time, I wondered: How do theySun, 22 Jun 2025 19:00:00 GMTBloghttps://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/tilt-the-odds-in-your-favor-before-deciding/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/tilt-the-odds-in-your-favor-before-deciding/I've written previously on the utility of fast decision-making. This should not be confused with running into situations as a headless chicken without a plan. It was Sun Tzu who said that "the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won". Speed and preparation areFri, 14 Jul 2023 19:50:28 GMTBloghttps://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/stoicism-gratitude-perspective-hardship/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/stoicism-gratitude-perspective-hardship/Stoicism is an ancient greek philosophy which contains timeless wisdom on how to live life to it's fullest.Mon, 22 May 2023 19:39:10 GMTBloghttps://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/decision-making/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/decision-making/We as humans are confronted with decisions all day, every day. Most of them are really inconsequential ("what pizza place should I order from?"), while others can can affect the trajectory of your entire life ("should I really take that job offer?"). We're not really trained to make decisionsTue, 25 Apr 2023 18:21:13 GMTBloghttps://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/obligation-to-dissent/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/obligation-to-dissent/When my team does not tell me I am making a mistake, they are being dishonest with me by omission. That is how I think about silence in the room. It is not neutrality, but a failure of honesty. Obligation to dissent is a fancy way of saying: If youSun, 23 Apr 2023 18:16:23 GMTBloghttps://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/unsupervised-search-metrics/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/unsupervised-search-metrics/The metrics I talked about in my previous post are rooted in information retrieval and all require human supervision. We need a labelled dataset and a human to compare the data against each other. Alternatively (or better: additionally) we can go to ours users directly and treat the behavior ofMon, 20 Mar 2023 20:45:10 GMTBloghttps://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/scrum-masters-need-to-rock-the-boat/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/scrum-masters-need-to-rock-the-boat/I once worked with a really good Scrum Master who made my views on the importance of the role do a complete 180. Most people I encounteredd in the role didn't do much more then share their screen during the daily, schedule the scrum ceremonies or remind the teamFri, 17 Mar 2023 21:03:59 GMTBloghttps://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/become-data-informed-not-data-driven/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/become-data-informed-not-data-driven/There are few phrases that get thrown around as much as the necessity to become data driven. It stems from the desire of building organizations and products more objectively. That's a good thing. Data moves us away from making products on the back of intuition and feeling, but itMon, 20 Feb 2023 21:45:50 GMTBloghttps://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/become-better-at-taking-notes/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/become-better-at-taking-notes/I used to take absolutely horrendous notes. And most people I encounter have similar underlying issues in regards to note taking. It’s something I noticed occasionally when working in-person, and something I have heavily noticed since the assimilation of remote work, as documents and notes are much moreWed, 02 Nov 2022 21:46:52 GMTBloghttps://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/metrics-that-matter-for-search/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/metrics-that-matter-for-search/Pivoting from being an SEO to being a product manager responsible for building a search engine made me really appreciate just how unassailably good Google is in its quality and sophistication. And yet, when building a search engine you will inevitably be benchmarked against Google, maybe internally but especially byTue, 01 Nov 2022 19:58:34 GMTBloghttps://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/knowing-when-to-walk-away-and-quit/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/knowing-when-to-walk-away-and-quit/Grit is viewed as a great virtue everyone should seek, while quitting is the mark of defeat and failure. Perserverance and fighting against the odds captures imagination and has a hero-like connotation to it. Grit is glorified - quitting is vilified. Quitting and cowardness has always been viewed as aSat, 29 Oct 2022 19:11:59 GMTBloghttps://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/the-rule-of-3/https://www.niklasbuellesbach.com/the-rule-of-3/Packaging your arguments into triads makes your argument more succinct and convincing. Why is that?Sun, 09 Oct 2022 19:29:00 GMTBlog