Hello my friends!
Beyond Incremental: The Journey Revealed
A Behind-the-Scenes Look at 12 Weeks of Writing in Public
For the past 12 weeks, youâve been receiving newsletters about leadership breakthroughs, scaling yourself, and creating category-defining impact. Last week, I mentioned I was writing a book. Today, I want to show you what weâve built together.
Every newsletter has been a piece of a larger puzzle - the Beyond Incremental Leadership Framework that emerged from my experience creating a new category with Plum Analytics and now helping other executives avoid the mistakes I made.
The âAhaâ Moment That Started Everything
One of my bucket list items has been to write a book.
Ever since I founded my first company, my co-founder and I would joke when things went wrong, âitâs ok, itâll be a great story for the book.â
But 2025 arrived, and⌠cricketsâŚ
After struggling to find structure for my book writing, I was invited to present the Plum Analytics case study at Wharton.
No pressure. Just present a business case to a room full of world-class business scholars.
I (over)prepared for the talk, and dove deep into the lessons I now see clearly with the benefit of hindsight.
Exploring how we created a breakthrough in the risk-averse academic research market clarified something crucial:
The goal isnât innovation - itâs breakthrough.
A few days after that talk, I walked into my home office and drew the diagram that became the organizing theme for everything Iâve been writing.
The Pattern Recognition
As my writing progressed, I saw topics emerging around the categories of people, passion, and performance.
But what I lacked was a villain.
Who w
as the villain in the room? What was stopping product leaders from achieving these breakthroughs?
The villain is incremental thinking.
And with fewer tech and PM roles, pressure that AI should transform how we work, and higher bars for advancement, incremental improvements wonât cut it anymore.
As I talked with more product leaders, I kept seeing the same pattern.
Even good leaders get trapped by optimizing within constraints instead of transforming them.
The 12-Week Experiment
So I decided to test somethingâŚ
Instead of writing in isolation, I decided to build this framework with you. Every newsletter became a laboratory. Every Saturday became a deadline.
I also began talking about what I was writing on LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky. (Connect with me there if you haven't already.)
What We Discovered Together:
- The People dimension (Scaling Yourself, Peak Performance, Talent Magnetism)
- The Performance dimension (Operating Rhythm, Impact Measurement, Hypothesis Mindset)
- The Passion dimension (Personal Why, Story Power, Passion Sustainability)
The stories some of you told about your personal why and what you are passionate about inspired me, and some of the critiques about what I was writing, kept me centered.
The 3 Breakthrough Intersections I Discovered:
From the beginning, I suspected the real power would come from the intersections between people, passion, and performance.
When these dimensions overlapped, it would create something greater than the sum of their parts.
As I wrote each week, these intersections became clearer and more defined:
People + Passion = Natural Authority
When you combine genuine care for people with authentic personal mission, you get influence that transcends hierarchy
People + Performance = Team Acceleration
When you multiply talent AND systematize performance, teams move faster without burning out
Passion + Performance = Category Creation
When authentic mission drives relentless execution, you create solutions the market didnât know it needed
The framework was becoming clear, but I realized something was missing: your stories of breakthroughs, not just theory.
But hereâs the thing that surprised me most
Writing in public forced me to clarify my thinking in ways that writing alone never could.
Having a deadline every Saturday and knowing you were waiting for the next piece pushed me to move from vague concepts to concrete frameworks.
The real breakthrough wasnât just the content.
It was proving that breakthrough thinking requires action, not just reflection.
This wasnât just content creation, it was demonstrating the very principle I was writing about: moving beyond incremental optimization to systematic transformation.
Iâm honestly nervous about what comes next
Because now Iâm going to ask you to do something that matters.
This framework isnât complete without your continued participation.
The book Iâm writing, Beyond Incremental: The Breakthrough Leadership Framework, needs your stories, your challenges, your breakthroughs.
đ For Leaders Ready to Go Deeper
Want to be part of the inner circle testing this framework?
Iâm working with a small group of product executives and senior leaders to refine the Beyond Incremental Leadership Framework before the book launches.
This isnât free. Itâs a structured 90-day breakthrough leadership engagement where youâll transform from incremental optimization to category-defining leadership:
- Get early access to the complete framework and assessment
- Receive 1:1 coaching sessions to apply it to your specific challenges
- Help shape the final methodology through your real-world application
- Join a peer group of other leaders making breakthrough transformations
How it works:
We start with a comprehensive assessment to identify which dimension (People, Performance, or Passion) is your biggest constraint, then focus our 90 days on systematically transforming that area first.
Limited to 8 leaders.
Iâm opening up the slots to my newsletter subscribers ahead of anyone else.
Reply with âInner Circleâ to secure your spot.
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Because hereâs what I really believe
Weâre not just writing a book about breakthrough leadership, weâre demonstrating it. Weâre creating something together that none of us could create alone.
In a world of incremental improvements and feature factories, weâre proving that breakthrough thinking happens when passionate people combine their perspectives with systematic execution.
You havenât just been reading about breakthrough leadership. Youâve been practicing it.
So reply and tell me:
Whatâs the one breakthrough youâre most ready to make?
Your story could be exactly what another leader needs to hear.
Iâll feature selected stories in the book (with your permission) and share insights that emerge from the patterns I discover.
And if you know someone whoâs been stuck in incremental leadership, forward this to them. They might not realize theyâre ready for breakthrough, but youâll recognize the signs, and theyâll thank you.
Together, we're proving that breakthrough thinking happens through action, not just reflection.
Let's keep building something extraordinary.
Andrea
P.S. Next week, I'll share the Breakthrough Leadership Assessment and publicly roll out my inner circle coaching offer. Please act now since I am only opening up a few spots.
P.P.S. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe below â
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