01
Good operations go unnoticed
When it works, nobody mentions it. The meeting is short, the launch is boring, the handover takes ten minutes. I've made peace with the fact that the best version of my work is invisible.
How I work
Can you ‘Martify’ this?
Colleagues at Google turned my name into a verb. Whenever something felt messy, confusing or stuck, someone would say: “Can you Martify it?”
It was a joke, mostly. It usually meant a slide. Sometimes a process. Occasionally an idea that existed as three bullet points and a hope.
What people were really asking was simpler than the word suggests: can you make this something people understand? That's the part of the work I enjoy most — taking something ambiguous and giving it structure, clarity and enough momentum to keep moving without me.
02
Documentation should save people time
Not prove it was written. If a doc doesn't shorten someone's week, it's a filing cabinet. I write for the person opening it at 4pm with a question and no patience.
03
Curiosity is part of the job
Most of what I've fixed started with asking why a number looked odd, or sitting with the team living with the problem. The answer is usually two conversations away, not in the dashboard.
04
Systems should make the right thing easier
People don't follow a process because it's correct. They follow it because it's the path of least resistance. If the shortcut is wrong, the process is wrong.
The best process is the one nobody notices they're following.