Founder Mode: The Dark Side of a Hyped Model

TL;DR: The Perils of Founder Mode

This article delves into the darker aspects of Founder Mode, popularized by Paul Graham and others. It offers a critical perspective for agile practitioners, product leaders, startup founders, and managers who embrace this paradigm and probably fall victim to survivorship bias; the Jobs and the Cheskys are the exception, not the rule.

The article explores how resulting tendencies, such as micromanagement, lack of strategic transparency, team devaluation, and reckless risk-taking, can undermine organizational health, stifle innovation, and conflict with agile principles. These can jeopardize long-term success while making work in organizations with a failed founder mode application miserable for everyone below the immediate leadership level and the founder himself.

Founder Mode: The Dark Side of a Hyped Leadership Model at Odds with First Principles of Agile Practices — Age-of-Product.com
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Health Checks for Agile Teams — From Spotify to The Liberators to Self-Made

TL; DR: Health Checks for Agile Teams

Agile teams thrive on continuous improvement and adaptability. Self-assessment isn’t just a health check measuring tool but a compass guiding teams toward their potential. It enables teams to understand their strengths, identify areas of improvement, and delve deeper into work dynamics beyond mere output.

The true essence of self-assessment in Agile is fostering transparency, collaboration, and relentless improvement. It’s not an audit; it’s a mirror reflecting a better version of your Agile team.

This article comprises a few well-known self-assessment tools; use them or have them inspire you to create your own assessment.

Health Checks for Agile Teams — Age-of-Product.com
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When the Management Ignores Self-Management — Making Your Scrum Work #16

TL; DR: Ignoring Self-Management — Undermining Scrum from the Start

There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. One of Scrum’s first principles is self-management. It is based on the idea that the people closest to a problem are best suited to find a solution. Therefore, the task of the management is not to tell people what to do when and how. Instead, its job is to provide the guardrails, the constraints within which a Scrum team identifies the best possible solution. Join me and explore the consequences of management ignoring self-management and what you can do about it.

Ignoring Self-Management — Making Your Scrum Work #16 — Age-of-Product.com
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Scrum Accountability

TL; DR: Scrum Accountability

‘Autonomy without accountability equals anarchy’ summarizes an essential design element of any agile organization. Without these checks and balances in place any aspiration to transform an organization is likely to fail. (Or at best level out at a mechanistic level.) Learn more about how Scrum deals with accountability.

Scrum Accountability: The Boss imposes Scrum upon the Team — Age-of-Product.com
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Agile Leadership — A Brief Overview of Concepts and Ideas

TL; DR: Agile Leadership

I recently started aggregating my notes, links, and references related to agile leadership to understand better what it — in the context of an agile transition — may look like. In the end, becoming agile is not the goal of a transition; surviving as an organization is. Hence I appreciate whatever appeals to business leaders and their motivation to delve into agile ideas, frameworks, or practices.

Let’s examine some favorite ideas and concepts around agile leadership. (Please bear with me that the following text is rather bullet-point heavy to concentrate its information.)

Agile Leadership — A Brief Overview of Concepts and Ideas
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