Food for Agile Thought #461: Bringing Problems, Backlash for Product Managers, Dangerous Founder Mode, Fueling Product Discovery

Welcome to the 461st edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 42,821 peers. I am Stefan Wolpers, offering hands-on, actionable advice to agile professionals.

This week, Ant Murphy advocates for leaders to foster collaboration and empathy over the ‘don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions’ mindset, while Melissa Perri critiques Paul Graham’s ‘Founder Mode,’ urging founder CEOs to balance vision with scalable strategies. Murray Robinson, Shane Gibson, and William Malek explore Haier’s decentralized operating model, and Shane Hastie and Declan Whelan emphasize the importance of technical health and Agile practices. Chris Matts critiques escalations, highlighting their role in reinforcing dysfunctional leadership, and a deep dive explores the perils of Founder Mode’s micromanagement and lack of transparency.

Next, Peter Yang addresses the growing negativity towards product managers, offering ten actionable insights to regain respect. Also, in conversation with Lenny Rachitsky, Camille Fournier discusses platform engineering frustrations and tips for new managers. Rohan Dehal explores how business models shape product strategy, focusing on aligning user needs with business goals, and Andrew Chen critiques common startup pivots, urging founders to prioritize refining their core product and targeting top users for success.

Lastly, John Cutler highlights three models—capability trees, customer journeys, and growth loops—that prevent siloed thinking in product development. At the same time, Maarten Dalmijn urges teams to prioritize value over timelines, Bandan Jot Singh critiques NPS, advocating for real-time sentiment analysis in D2C companies, and Paweł Huryn shares 12 key sources for product discovery. Finally, Jason Cohen explores the accuracy of crowd wisdom in objective scenarios but warns against its stifling effect on innovation in creative work.

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🎓 Launch on October 23: Learn How to Master the Most Important Artifact in the Advanced Product Backlog Management Course!

👉 Please note:

• The course includes membership in my professional students' brand-new Hands-on Agile community.
• The course will only be available for sign-up until October 31, 2024!

🏆 Tip of the Week

Ant Murphy argues against the ‘don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions’ mindset, advocating instead for leaders to foster collaboration, empathy, and a safe space for surfacing problems to find better solutions together: "Great Leaders Think ‘Bring Problems, Let’s Find a Solution Together.’"

🍋 Lemon of the Week

The author claims Scrum sprints are the root of all developer stress, missing the basic principle of sustainable pace. By ignoring the flexibility and autonomy Scrum offers, he somehow turns it into a never-ending treadmill of misery. Perhaps next time, he should first learn what Scrum is actually about instead of blaming it outright: "Why Scrum is Stressing You Out."

➿ Agile & Leadership

• Melissa Perri critiques Paul Graham’s ‘Founder Mode,’ emphasizing the need for founder CEOs to balance vision with scalable strategy and trust experienced leaders as companies grow beyond the startup phase: "My thoughts on "Founder Mode" and why it's dangerous." (Pair with my article below: Founder Mode: The Dark Side of a Hyped Model.)

• 🎙 Murray Robinson, Shane Gibson, and William Malek discuss Haier’s decentralized operating model, where 5,700 micro-enterprises use internal marketplaces, smart contracts, and value-added mechanisms to drive innovation and optimize performance: "The Haier model with William Malek."

• Chris Matts critiques escalations in organizations, arguing they reinforce dysfunctional leadership, disrupt processes, and validate senior executives’ power rather than addressing root causes like poor planning and risk management: "Failureship and Escalations."

• 🎙 InfoQ: Shane Hastie and Declan Whelan talk about technical health, DORA metrics, Agile practices, and team culture, emphasizing the importance of continuous delivery, observability, and long-term service stewardship in modern software development: "Engineering Excellence: Declan Whelan on Technical Health, Agile Practices, and Team Culture."

🎓 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — November 21, 2024

The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) training by Berlin Product People is a one-day official Scrum.org class for advanced Scrum practitioners and agile coaches, including the industry-acknowledged PSFS certification. This PSFS training class is in English.

Enjoy the benefits of a live virtual immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 CET.

Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — November 21, 2024.

Customer review: “Great experience – “You reap what you saw.” What I really liked about it was the constant usage of facilitation techniques & Liberating Structures to engage all participants & harness the collective knowledge while reaching the goal of the exercises during the workshop. Therefore, my experience was great because I could really leave with some insights from the whole group that I could apply in my daily work starting from the next day. “You reap what you saw” and in this case, it was the collective intelligence of everyone in the training class.” (Link.)

🎯 Product

• Peter Yang reflects on the growing negativity toward product managers and offers ten actionable insights to regain respect, including cutting product management theater, designing better incentives, and focusing on building customer-facing products: "Why Is Everyone Hating on Product Managers?"

• 🎙 In this pod with Lenny Rachitsky, Camille Fournier, author of The Manager’s Path, shares insights on platform engineering, including what frustrates engineers about PMs, how to avoid major rewrites, and tips for new managers and platform teams: "The things engineers are desperate for PMs to understand."

• Rohan Dehal emphasizes how business models shape product strategy, exploring how freemium, subscription and other models create incentives that drive development decisions, offering insights on aligning user needs with business goals: "Business Models as Product Strategy: A Deep Dive."

• Andrew Chen outlines common startup pivots that often fail, urging founders to focus on specific, actionable pivots like refining their core product or targeting top users: "Unfortunate startup pivots (a short list)."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• John Cutler highlights three key models—capability trees, customer journeys, and growth loops—that help cross-functional teams avoid siloed thinking, promote collaboration, and prevent the ‘functional model trap’ in product development: "Trees, Journeys, and Loops (and the Functional Model Trap)."

• Maarten Dalmijn argues that obsessive focus on estimates and timelines hinders value delivery, urging teams to prioritize product quality and ensure they move in the right direction before accelerating: " Why Estimates and Timelines Are the Biggest Enemy to Delivering Value."

• Bandan Jot Singh critiques the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and advocates for real-time sentiment analysis as a more comprehensive alternative for measuring customer experience, particularly in large-scale direct-to-consumer (D2C) companies: "Net Promoter Score is a scam, here's an alternative."

• Pawel Huryn shares 12 proven sources to fuel product discovery, emphasizing customer interviews, data analytics, stakeholder insights, and benchmarking as essential tools for innovation and maximizing impact in product management: "12 Proven Sources of Insights to Fuel Your Product Discovery."

🎶 Encore

• Jason Cohen explores the ‘wisdom of crowds,’ demonstrating its accuracy in objective scenarios like guessing jellybeans, but warns that crowds can stifle innovation by vetoing unique ideas in creative work: "Ignoring the Wisdom of Crowds."

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Oct 1-2 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Oct 9 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile 65: The Lean Tech Manifesto with Fabrice Bernhard (English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Oct 15-16 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master - Advanced Training (PSM II; English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Nov 6-7 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Nov 18-19 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master - Advanced Training (PSM II; English)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Nov 21 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class (PSFS II; English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Dec 4-5 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

• David Pereira: From Backlog Manager to Product Manager.

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