About Step Zero
The work of becoming
What is Step Zero?
Step Zero is the work that comes before the work. Before you can lead a product team, ship the right thing, or build a culture people want to be part of – there's a prerequisite. You have to become the kind of person who can do those things. Not learn a framework. Not get a title. Become.
We treat product leadership like it's a set of processes to follow – agile ceremonies, roadmap templates, stakeholder management playbooks. Those things matter. But they only work when the person behind them has done the harder work first: developing the instinct to ask the right questions, building the capacity to sit with ambiguity, learning to see teams and products as systems rather than checklists.
That's what this publication is about. The becoming. How you develop the diagnostic mindset that sees connections between people, problems, and patterns. How you build the trust that makes honest conversations possible. How you learn to think in systems so you're solving root causes instead of chasing symptoms.
Step Zero isn't about what to do. It's about who you need to become before any of those tactics actually work.
About Matthew Stublefield
Matthew has spent over 20 years leading product teams at the intersection of technology, design, and human behavior. He's built and scaled teams at startups and established companies, always focused on one question: what do leaders actually owe the people who report to them?
His background is unconventional for tech. He studied Religious Studies and Poetry in college, later becoming a Certified Grief Counselor. That foundation shapes his approach to leadership — one grounded in obligation, empathy, and the recognition that leading people is fundamentally about understanding people.
Matthew developed the obligation-based leadership framework over years of practice, study, and learning from his own mistakes. He believes leadership is a discipline that can be learned and improved through deliberate practice, not a mystical quality some people are born with.
He lives with his family in Springfield, Missouri and is the founder of Fieldway, LLC.