The Tool You Invest In

Every lifter knows that tools matter. A barbell with tight tolerances, smooth bearings, and well-kept knurling does not just make lifting more enjoyable, it makes it safer, more effective, and more consistent. Good equipment is about performance and longevity, not appearances. Neglect your tools and you get unpredictable outcomes, unnecessary risk, and wasted effort.

The same is true of building products and teams. The most important tool you will ever invest in is your people. Yet in too many organizations, especially the ones led by egocentric founders or executives, the energy goes into a cult of personality instead of into the team that actually delivers. These leaders chase personal brand moments, the keynotes, the interviews, the social media spotlights, while their people go without resources, watch priorities shift under them, and guess at the goals. A company like that is not built to lift everyone up, it is built to keep one person at the top.

WeWork under Adam Neumann is the prime example. Neumann’s obsession with his personal image and his extravagant lifestyle overshadowed the needs of the company and its employees. His behavior bred chaos and instability and ended in WeWork’s spectacular collapse. Thousands of workers and investors got hurt because they had trusted the vision of one person rather than a strong team.

I preach the complete opposite. Our job as leaders is not to cultivate an image of ourselves as saviors or visionaries but to clear the path so our teams can do their best work, remove the obstacles, and set people up for success without making ourselves the story. A leader who needs to be the hero will always trade team health for personal glory, and a leader who makes the team the hero builds strength that lasts.

Then look at Microsoft under Satya Nadella. He moved the company away from internal politics and combative silos and toward a culture of empathy, shared success, and growth mindset, and a stagnating giant became one of the most innovative and collaborative companies in the world. His investment in people became Microsoft’s most powerful tool, and it brought back both morale and performance.

The investment is not complicated, and most of it is small. It is the one-on-one that goes past the status update. It is the career conversation that matches what someone actually wants with what the organization needs. It is honest encouragement when someone steps up to a hard problem. None of it looks like much on its own, any more than oiling the bearings on a barbell or checking the safety pins does. It adds up to a culture where people believe they can perform at their best.

When you do not invest in your tools, or your team, things break. People leave, quality drops, and trust erodes. Frustration festers when problems get ignored or when people are treated like cogs instead of craftspeople. The team goes brittle and cannot adapt when the stress goes up. Over time, like a neglected piece of gym equipment, it becomes unsafe and unreliable.

The best leaders I have worked with treat the team itself as the ultimate tool. They invest ahead of the need: learning, mentorship, collaboration rituals, mental health support. They advocate for their team’s needs with the same urgency they would bring to a broken production system. They know an investment in people pays back in creativity, resilience, and performance that holds up over time.

And they know the investment never ends. A well-used barbell needs regular maintenance, and people need consistent care. The strongest teams I have seen were not built by one-time efforts or flashy perks but by steady, thoughtful attention that left every member feeling stronger, safer, and more capable.

Empathy is at the heart of great product management. We spend our days listening to users, understanding their pain, and building things that make their lives better. Too many of us forget that empathy has to start with our own teams. The same patience, curiosity, and care we give customers should shape how we support the people we work beside every day. Point empathy outward to users and inward to the team at the same time, and you get a culture where everyone feels seen, valued, and motivated to do their best work.

“Titles do not matter. Relying on explicit authority, your rank, your title, your power over someone’s paycheck, reveals weakness, not strength.”

The strongest leaders do not force anyone to follow them. They build an environment where people want to follow, because they trust the mission, believe in the work, and feel supported in becoming their best. That is implicit authority, the quiet confidence you earn by consistently empowering others. It is the difference between a boss people fear and a leader people choose.

I saw this firsthand in the US Army. The people who demanded respect purely on rank were usually the ones who deserved it least. Leaders like Nate Fick inspired teams who wanted to follow them into battle. Not because they had to, but because they believed in the leader, the mission, and each other.

When AI Joins the Team

The team is changing in 2026. AI agents are teammates now. They draft, summarize, prototype, prioritize, ship, and, more and more, decide. You manage them the way you would manage any direct report: a clear mission, honest feedback, and real ownership when something breaks. The team is still the tool. The tool just got bigger. I will come back to this in the chapter on AI, because it deserves more than a paragraph.

The strongest teams are not defined by the brilliance of a single person, or the cleverness of a single model, but by how fiercely they lift each other, day after day. When we invest in people with patience and purpose, we build not just products, but missions worth believing in.