Imagine moving into a new house. Everything looks perfect at first glance, but as you settle in, you notice the small inconveniences—a squeaky door, a flickering light, a broken shelf. These are the things that the previous occupants learned to live with, adapting to the inconveniences rather than fixing them. Now, what would make an immediate impression? Fixing those broken shelves. This is the essence of what is called the Broken Shelf Approach—a leadership strategy that focuses on addressing the overlooked, yet impactful, issues that everyone has grown accustomed to ignoring.

The Genesis of the Broken Shelf Approach

This approach was beautifully exemplified by Nat Friedman when he became CEO of GitHub after Microsoft’s acquisition. Instead of laying out a multi-year strategic plan, he shared a giant list of over 100 customer complaints and issues. His plan? “Today, we’re going to pick one item on this list and fix it. Tomorrow, we’ll pick another one, and fix that. And the next day… until we’ve nailed 20+ of these.”

This shift in focus did three major things:

1. Shock Therapy: The team was used to thinking in quarters and years. Suddenly, the timeline shrank to “ship something today.” This change in mindset created urgency and a sense of accomplishment.
2. Learning from the Ground Up: By diving into the details, Friedman gained a deep understanding of where the problems were, which teams were effective, and where technical debt was highest. This ground-level insight is invaluable for any leader looking to understand their organization’s true state.
3. Building Trust through Action: Customers were worried about Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub. Would they ruin it? Should they leave? Seeing the product improve immediately built faith that things would be okay, reassuring both customers and the community.

Why the Broken Shelf Approach Works

1. Immediate Impact and Morale Boost

Often, teams are bogged down by years of neglected issues—bugs, tech debt, and inefficiencies that everyone has learned to work around. These “broken shelves” can sap morale and productivity. By fixing them, you show the team that their daily struggles matter and that leadership is committed to making their lives better.

2. Creating a Culture of Action

When leadership focuses on long-term goals without addressing day-to-day pain points, it can create a disconnect between vision and reality. The Broken Shelf Approach shifts the focus to immediate, tangible action, setting a precedent that small wins are valuable and that progress doesn’t have to wait for the perfect plan.

3. Customer Confidence

For customers, seeing improvements happen quickly reassures them that their feedback is heard and acted upon. It’s a direct message: “We care about your experience, and we’re doing something about it.” This can be crucial during times of transition, like a company acquisition or leadership change.

How to Implement the Broken Shelf Approach

1. Identify the Broken Shelves

Start by gathering a list of known issues—customer complaints, internal frustrations, and technical debt. This list should be as comprehensive as possible, capturing the real pain points that affect your team and users.

2. Prioritize for Quick Wins

Not all issues are created equal. Prioritize those that can be fixed quickly but have a high impact on morale or customer satisfaction. The goal is to create momentum with visible results.

3. Create a Daily Focus

Instead of trying to tackle everything at once, pick one issue to fix each day or week. Share the progress with the team and celebrate these small victories. This keeps everyone aligned and motivated.

4. Communicate Transparently

Let your team and customers know what you’re doing and why. Transparency builds trust, and sharing your process helps everyone understand the value of what you’re addressing.

5. Iterate and Scale

As you resolve the immediate issues, use the insights gained to inform larger strategic decisions. Which areas need a deeper dive? Where are the systemic problems that require more than a quick fix? Use this approach as a stepping stone to broader organizational change.

Beyond the Broken Shelf

While the Broken Shelf Approach is powerful for creating immediate impact, it’s not a substitute for long-term strategy. Once you’ve built momentum and trust, it’s crucial to shift back to larger planning and goal setting. Use the insights and goodwill you’ve earned to align the team around a shared vision, now rooted in a deeper understanding of the day-to-day realities they face.

Conclusion

The Broken Shelf Approach is about more than just fixing small problems—it’s about building trust, driving action, and creating a culture that values progress over perfection. By addressing the issues that everyone else has learned to ignore, you demonstrate that you care about the details and that you’re committed to making things better, one step at a time.

In every organization, there are “broken shelves”—issues that are annoying, but not seen as critical enough to fix immediately. By focusing on these, you show that no problem is too small to matter. It’s a strategy that starts with action and ends with transformation. And sometimes, the best way to lead is to simply start fixing what’s broken.

Satya Nadella’s quote, “The tech industry does not respect tradition, it respects innovation,” perfectly encapsulates the mindset driving technological progress, particularly in open source finance. This idea resonated deeply at the Open Source in Finance Forum (OSFF) in New York, an event hosted by the Linux Foundation, where the focus was on transforming finance through open source innovation.

The tech industry, especially in finance, is marked by rapid changes and advancements, and Nadella’s words reflect a crucial reality: sticking to tradition alone is no longer viable in this fast-evolving space. The Open Source in Finance Forum highlighted this idea through its sessions, keynotes, and discussions, where financial institutions and technology leaders came together to explore the future of finance powered by open collaboration and open source.

Innovation as the Core of Open Source in Finance

At the OSFF, participants explored various aspects of open source technology, from blockchain and AI to quantum computing and fintech integrations. The event underscored how traditional financial systems must adapt to stay relevant in a world where innovation, driven by open source contributions, is becoming the lifeblood of the industry. Nadella’s quote resonated with the central theme that legacy systems, while foundational, must embrace modernization to compete with disruptive technologies.

In sessions discussing the role of quantum computing in finance, for instance, the emphasis was on how legacy systems can no longer cope with the speed and complexity required for future financial models. The attendees explored the potential for open source to accelerate quantum computing advancements, reflecting Nadella’s sentiment about innovation being the driving force in the industry.

Breaking Down Silos with Open Source

One of the key takeaways from the Open Source in Finance Forum was the need to break down silos—both technological and cultural—within financial institutions. Open source tools enable financial organizations to collaborate across borders and industries, creating shared solutions that challenge the conventional practices that have long governed the sector. The tech industry’s respect for innovation, not tradition, was mirrored in how financial institutions and fintech startups discussed their adoption of open source strategies, enabling faster iteration and cutting-edge developments.

For example, the FINOS (Fintech Open Source Foundation) projects showcased at the forum demonstrated how open source collaboration can revolutionize everything from data management to regulatory compliance, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in finance. These projects embody the spirit of Nadella’s quote, as they reject the notion that financial technology must be bound by the same rules and traditions that have shaped the industry for decades.

The Need for Continuous Reinvention

The Open Source in Finance Forum also emphasized the need for continuous reinvention within financial organizations to keep pace with the innovation cycle. With the rapid emergence of new technologies such as AI, blockchain, and decentralized finance, the message from OSFF speakers was clear: staying competitive requires an ongoing commitment to experimentation, collaboration, and openness to new ideas. Nadella’s assertion that the tech industry respects innovation rather than tradition reinforced the broader call to action heard throughout the forum: financial institutions must embrace open source and adapt or risk being left behind.

Conclusion

Satya Nadella’s quote encapsulates a vital truth for the financial technology industry. At the Open Source in Finance Forum in New York, it became evident that tradition alone can no longer sustain the sector. Instead, financial organizations must innovate, leveraging the power of open source collaboration to thrive in a world of constant technological change. As the sessions, keynotes, and discussions at OSFF underscored, innovation—not tradition—is what will propel the financial industry into the future.

OpenAI Dev Day is set to provide a glimpse into the next generation of AI applications and advancements. From data democratization to the acceleration of cancer research, this event will showcase cutting-edge developments and novel use cases in artificial intelligence. Here’s what attendees can look forward to.

Bridging the Gap Between Data and Accessibility

Joyce Gordon and Camden Clark are expected to introduce a transformative approach to handling data, focusing on making data more accessible to everyone, regardless of technical expertise. They will likely present AI-powered text-to-SQL solutions, enabling non-technical users to query databases using natural language. This promises to break down barriers between decision-makers and critical data, democratizing access to valuable insights.

AI for Low-Resource Languages: Expanding the Global Reach

Anna Dixon from Dimagi will address a significant challenge in AI—developing models for low-resource languages. In many parts of the world, these languages have little digital presence, limiting the effectiveness of existing AI models. Dixon’s presentation will likely explore fine-tuning GPT-4 to overcome these challenges, empowering marginalized communities and reducing global language inequities.

Accelerating Cancer Research with AI

Scott Ogden and Jan-Samuel Wagner from Genmab will share how AI is set to revolutionize cancer research. By automating document creation, they will show how AI can accelerate the time-consuming processes involved in research and development, allowing researchers to focus more on discovery. This will likely highlight how AI will hasten the pace of innovations in cancer treatments, potentially offering hope to patients and healthcare professionals in the near future.

Enhancing Developer Experiences with Generative UI

Jared Palmer of Vercel will demonstrate how generative AI is poised to transform developer workflows. His session will focus on how AI can create dynamic, intuitive user interfaces that will streamline how developers interact with their tools. This promises to usher in a new era for software development, making it faster and easier to create high-quality applications with AI-generated interfaces.

The Future of AI-Driven Societies

In one of the more speculative presentations, Robert Yang and Nico Christie from Altera will envision a future society composed entirely of AI agents. Their session will explore how these AI agents could collaborate and develop complex behaviors autonomously, offering a thought-provoking glimpse into how AI might simulate or even participate in human-like societies, pushing the boundaries of AI’s potential role.

Multimodal AI: Revolutionizing Travel Planning

Garrick Toubasi of Mindtrip will unveil how multimodal AI will reshape the future of travel planning. Combining text, images, and other inputs, the AI will provide seamless and personalized travel experiences, promising to make trip planning more interactive and tailored to individual needs. This presentation is expected to demonstrate how AI will revolutionize the travel industry in the coming years.

Benchmarking AI Agents with Realism

Karthik Narasimhan and Noah Shinn from Sierra will tackle the future of testing AI models by creating realistic benchmarks for AI agents. Their session will focus on how large language models will be evaluated to reflect real-world complexities. These benchmarks will play a crucial role in improving the practical capabilities of AI, ensuring models are robust enough for future deployment in complex environments.

Harnessing Data for Humanitarian Efforts

Caitlin Augustin and Mitali Ayyangar of DataKind will demonstrate the critical role AI will play in humanitarian crises. Their focus will be on using AI to activate data in real-time during emergencies. This rapid-response approach promises to enable teams to make faster, more informed decisions, potentially saving lives and resources in future humanitarian efforts.

Fine-Tuning AI for Developers

Alistair Pullen from Cosine will delve into how fine-tuning AI will optimize it specifically for software development tasks. This session will likely focus on how developers will benefit from AI’s ability to assist with coding and debugging, improving productivity and reducing errors. AI is set to become an indispensable tool for developers, streamlining workflows and enhancing software quality.

Exploring OpenAI’s o1 Initiative

Jason Wei and Hyung Won Chung from OpenAI Research will introduce the community to OpenAI’s upcoming project, o1. Although details are still emerging, the o1 initiative will likely offer new tools and frameworks designed to make AI more accessible for developers and organizations, providing an exciting new way to build with AI.

Social Justice Meets Prompt Engineering

Tilde Thurium from LaunchDarkly will explore the intersection of social justice and prompt engineering. This session will focus on how prompt engineering can be used to promote fairness and inclusivity in AI systems. As AI continues to shape the future, Thurium’s talk will highlight the importance of ensuring AI serves all communities fairly, emphasizing the ethical responsibilities developers will face in the years ahead.

The Road Ahead for AI

OpenAI Dev Day will serve as a window into the future of AI, showcasing how the technology will evolve from theory to practice across various industries. From making data more accessible and improving healthcare to enhancing developer experiences and addressing social justice, the event will underscore the growing influence of AI. As these technologies continue to advance, we can expect a future marked by increased accessibility, ethical responsibility, and a wider array of transformative applications that will reshape society.