Care Force

Most of being good at things in life is caring enough to do it right.

I wrote this note a while ago. The thought came up again these past few weeks as I extinguished fires of carelessness.

When people care, they:

• Ask questions to make sure they’re doing the right thing.
• Take an intentional approach to solve problems.
• Build a holistic understanding of the work.

Care is more than an emotion. It’s an operational force. And, like any force used intentionally, it creates positive change.

Consider care as a formula:

Care = ( Curiosity × Competence ) → Coherence

Curiosity

Curiosity begins with attention. You have to notice something, but then you have to catalyze the attention into something more. You ask questions. You probe and learn and convert the caring energy into empathy.

As a formula:

Curiosity = Attention + Inquiry + Empathy

I run metrics every week. I add the numbers manually to a spreadsheet and run a Claude script to convert those static numbers into visual reports. It grades the status of the product funnel in terms of traffic-light statuses of green (good), yellow (warning), red (bad). It’s directional.

With no curiosity, it stops here. I’d accept the output and move on with my day.

But I don’t. I’m curious. I slow down, think deeply, and start asking questions:

• Why did that number shift so much this week?
• Is this an anomaly or indicative of a larger trend?
• Why are these numbers moving in opposite directions?

That’s attention driving inquiry. Empathy follows.

So how do you improve your curiosity?

1. Pay attention to the details.
2. Ask more intentional questions.
3. Continuously validate your assumptions.

Competence

Competence begins with skill. You develop skills, practice them to get better, and then uncover the principles to maintain adaptability inside systems of constant change.

As a formula:

Competence = Skill + Practice + Adaptation

There’s a crossing guard at my kid’s school. She’s been the crossing guard at a specific intersection for nearly two decades now. She’s wonderful. And she’s the non-tech example I always provide to illustrate care, competency, and craft.

She knows every child’s name, manages the traffic at a busy intersection, and gets everyone to school safely. She developed a set of skills, improved them through deliberate practice, and developed principles to continuously adapt over the years.

Skills, practice, and adaptation.

So how do you improve your competence?

1. Learn more diverse skills.
2. Learn by doing and experimenting.
3. Understand principles to stay adaptable.

Coherence

The result? Coherence.

Teams in misalignment are a result of siloed information. When everyone has their own AI conversations, context is no longer in a shared space. There’s a lack of rigorous debate, messy collaboration, and shared understanding.

Context is lost.

If thinking is shaped by the conversations we have—with ourselves and others—what happens when those conversations are isolated, biased, and/or misleading?

Coherence drifts.

And care is the driving force to shift the drift of coherence.

Product work extends across a range of disciplines: sales, marketing, finance, design, engineering. Strategy is the single thread weaving through each discipline. Product must understand how an idea mutates through each discipline, leverage strategy to maintain coherence, and care enough to see it through.

I like software because it’s a complex system (the software) built by a complex system (the team) within a complex system (the company). And, within complex systems, information flows through distinct stages, often changing hands between multiple people with different reporting lines. I build features with designers, engineers, and QA who don’t report to me. I work with the sales and marketing teams to convert those features into something we can sell to generate business value. I respond to feedback from customers and stakeholders with distinctly different perspectives and incentives.

To maintain coherence, you need to care enough to see quality through from beginning to end.

And you know what doesn’t care? AI. But humans do. So if you use your innately human ability to care, you can thrive alongside the machines increasingly shrinking the scope of work.

It starts and ends with care.