The only thing stopping our brilliance is our own incompetence

This one sounds like I'm being a bit of a dick, but it's actually the most optimistic thing I believe about my team.

Hospitable has brilliant engineers. We have a product our customers depend on. The talent is there, the ambition is there, the opportunity is there.

So when things go wrong - and they do, of course - it's unlikely because the problem was too hard. It's because we made it hard for ourselves. Bad communication, unclear requirements, poor planning, not testing the thing we knew we should've tested, not holding each other accountable, letting things slide because it's not your bit, or repeating similar mistakes.

That's the incompetence part. Not in the 'you're all useless' sense, but in the 'we knew better and didn't do better' sense.

And honestly? That's great news. Because it means the ceiling is almost always in our control. We don't need to just hire more people or wait for better tools. We need to get out of our own way.