A Field Guide for Real Product People

This project grew out of years of trying to connect what I was learning with what I was actually seeing in the work.

I’ve learned a lot from good books, talks, frameworks, and great product & design thinkers. But in practice, those ideas collide with priorities, incentives, personalities, organizational structures, politics, deadlines, and incomplete information.

I’ve seen that while doing the work myself, leading teams, and coaching people through situations where the answer wasn’t sitting neatly inside strategic or execution theory.

These 52 essays bring together ideas I’ve learned, patterns I’ve observed, and lessons I’ve seen play out across teams and organizations. The goal isn’t another product methodology. It’s to help make the connections easier to see, quickly identify why work gets stuck, what might actually be happening, and then where you have leverage to move it forward.

It’s a field guide you can read straight through or return to when you’re dealing with a particular situation: an anthology grounded in the realities of how we work and the peopling dynamics behind what actually gets done.

I’m Vincent Baskerville. I’ve spent my career working across product and design, doing the work, leading teams, and helping other people navigate it.

52x is my attempt to gather the lessons, ideas, and connections I’ve found most useful into one place — and make them useful when your work gets real.