Trust is a latency killer

PROW 2026

Refactoring the product role for an AI-driven world. AI is not the problem, your leadership OS is.

Trust is not a soft word. Inside a delivery system it is a performance metric. Verifying every step adds latency, and a team that is afraid to admit a mistake drops packets. This talk takes that one line and builds a product operating model out of it.

Three layers, three directives. Rebuild the foundation, which means knowing which of individual trust, leader trust and mutual trust is the one actually missing. Then trade control for context: hand people the problem rather than the solution, and get out from between them and the business. Then trim instead of protecting, because execution got cheap, coherence got expensive, and direction is the part still worth your calendar.

It ends on the scorecard I use to decide whether a pilot scales, earns two more weeks, or dies this afternoon, and on the three things that do not automate: noticing weak signals early, working in the fuzzy zone without panicking, and separating your self-worth from flawless execution.