This is the weekly newsletter for People people who think like Product people. If you think traditional HR practices are stale and out of touch, you have found your People🤘

Learn how product principles and design thinking can transform your People function into a growth driver… all in the time it takes to drink your morning coffee☕

Whether you’re a PX newbie or already a pro, here you’ll find actionable tools and tactics to get full leadership buy-in and make an impact from day 1 🚀

P.S …mine’s a Cortado with oat if you’re buying 😉

Want to hang out with PX Community in London? 👀

Join me at the SapienX London PX Community Meet-up in October 🥳 After wrapping up our Immersive PX Learning Experience, we’re keeping the energy going with a casual social hang-out – open to both our immersive attendees and the wider London PX community. ​ As most of the Immersive PX cohort + speakers / facilitators will be joining us, we have around 20 additional places available at the moment, we may open up some late spots if the venue can support it, but no guarantees... ​📅Tuesday 7th October 2025 ​🕧6pm - 9pm (late) ​📍Shoreditch, London If you want to hang out with some of brightest minds in PX (and coolest people, obviously 😎) make sure you... ​ grab your spot, today!

Read time: 2 minutes

Hey Reader 👋🏻

A Writer, a Product Manager, and Head of People walk into a bar... 👀

Correct, not your usual combination of people, but sounds honestly like my dream night out 😅 It actually sounds like a breakdown of my multiple personalities to be fair, ha!

I realise also that with that opening, I now should have a witty narrative and punchline lined up to finish the joke, but I don't... Sorry about that!

What I do have is practical lesson that Product Managers learned from Writers, which Heads of People can learn from Product Managers; “Kill your darlings.”

The phrase comes from writers, specifically the brutal editorial process of writing, and in essences it means cutting the lines, characters, or chapters you love most if they don’t serve the story.

If you are a writer, or you have spent any amount of time around writers, you will know can be very precious about their art (rightly so) - It's also why great writers have the best editors. An objective and ruthless pair of eyes who can spot when the art is getting in the way of the story and can make the harsh decisions on which darlings to kill.

It was my brother (Joe) who introduced me to the concept whilst I was deep in the planning Immersive PX Amsterdam. I was stressing about a few high-production, resource-heavy elements relating to the attendee (and speaker) experience. I believed they were important and had to be in, despite the fact they were expensive, time-draining, and ultimately would lead the P&L to a loss.

My logic was: “We’ll just make it work and deal with the losses later.”

But after talking it through with Joe (and then Nish), it became glaringly obvious: these “darlings” weren’t adding enough value to the overall experience to justify the cost - what's more, we could deliver an exceptional experience without them. So, reluctantly, I killed them.

The result was that we delivered a tighter, more impactful event and a huge saving in cost and energy. That’s when the phrase stopped being just writing advice and became a Product principle.

How it applies to Product Teams

Product teams face this same challenge daily. Engineers fall in love with features they’ve spent weeks building. But if those features don’t improve the user experience and create value, a good Product Manager will catch them and cut them from the roadmap (not without a few disagreements and emotionally charged conversations along the way! Like writers, Engineers are artists in their own right, so you can expect some resistance to the cut 😱

It stings of course. But this objective and critical eye for detail is essential. Otherwise, the product bloats with features that look / sound impressive, but add no value to the product and UX.

Great product teams know: if it doesn’t create value for the user, it doesn’t ship.

How it applies to People Teams

We fall into the same trap in People Ops and PX too. Like writers and engineers, People people can be VERY emotionally invested in their work and we can easily mistake our passion for priority.

This is compounded by being in an open era, where every cool company has an open-sourced company handbook - it can be easy to say "we need to have this because [insert cool company] has it".

Or, "we (as People / HR) believe this important, so we will prioritise it."

OR, "we have already spend 3 months to get this far, let's just see it though..."

These are very precarious positions to take for a time, resource, budget (and often, credibility) light People team. Without an objective view on assessing the the programmes and projects on the People Roadmap.

The real skill for Head of People is the same as writing and product: ruthless editing. Cutting the work we’re most attached to so the overall story - the employee experience - is sharper, simpler, more impactful.

Framework: Kill your darlings

Ok, as always let's make this practical with a very simple 4 step process you can put into action:

1️⃣ Anchor to the problem

The first place to start as always; is our roadmap aligned to real problems (and opportunities)?

• Writer: What’s the core story we must stay true to?
• Product: What user pain are we solving?
• People: What employee / business problem are we solving?

2️⃣ Spot the darlings

Next, an objective and ruthless editorial eye to spot where initiatives and programmes have made it on to the roadmap that aren't true value creators:

• Writer: The beautiful sentence that adds nothing to the story.
• Product: The feature engineers love but users don’t.
• People: The programme your super proud of but nobody uses or values.

3️⃣ Test the cut

Fore programmes and initiatives that are already shipped or have already reached employees / internal stakeholders, don't be too aggressive with the cut, you can strip back slowly to make sure you aren't ignoring some hidden or unknown value:

• Writer: Delete it. Does the story get clearer?
• Product: Hide the feature. Does anyone miss it? Does the UX improve?
• People: Strip the programme back to the minimum lovable version. Is anyone negatively affected?

4️⃣ Keep editing

This is a continuous process, it isn't a one and done kinda deal - your People Roadmap will continue to evolve and so your process of objective review and cuts needs to be a continuous cycle too:

1. Writer: Continue to edit until the story is super clear.
2. Product: Evolve the product roadmaps with continuous user discovery.
3. People: Evolve the People roadmaps with continuous user discovery!

Here's what I want you to do - This week, pick one People initiative your are working on / or that's in the pipeline, and ask:

👉 If this were a feature on a product roadmap, would it make the cut? Or am I keeping it alive because I love it?

If it’s the latter… it’s time to kill your darling.

Writers are taught this brilliant but brutal but brilliant piece of advice. Product Managers have learned to embrace it. It's time for People teams to adopt Kill your darlings as integral principle of PX.

In PX as with writing (and product) - the craft isn’t always in what you add, but what you’re willing to cut.

OK, that’s a wrap for this week.

Grab your coffee and open up your inbox same time next week for more insights, tips, and resource flags on how to smash HR silos, add strategic value and turn your People function into a growth driver 🚀

With love,

Luke ✌🏻

PS, when you are ready you might like...

Has this newsletter been forwarded to you? 👀

​Subscribe by clicking on the banner below 👇🏻 to start getting these weekly PX-product powerups right into your inbox 📩

You should also check out the The PX Espresso Hour Podcast🎙️

​​​