Arguing Agile: Product Management, Business Leadership, & Org Design cover art

Arguing Agile: Product Management, Business Leadership, & Org Design

Arguing Agile: Product Management, Business Leadership, & Org Design

By: Brian Orlando
Listen for free

We're seeking to prepare you to better deal with real-life challenges to business agility by discussing the real arguments you will encounter as you progress through your career.

Arguing Agile is hosted by a Product Manager and a Business Coach who explore experience from their careers, share stories, and suggest advice to other professionals. We seek to do these things while maintaining an unbiased position from any financial interest.

© 2026 Arguing Agile: Product Management, Business Leadership, & Org Design
Economics
Episodes
  • AA263 - "Nothing" Is The Most Expensive Word In Your Career
    Jul 1 2026
    Your boss asks what you need. You blank and say "nothing." You just turned down free money.

    Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Leader Om Patel discuss and debate why that reflex costs you promotions, sponsorship, and credibility, and how to rewire it before your boss stops asking entirely.

    By the end, you'll have a five-line cheat sheet to pull from so you're never caught flat-footed again!

    Listen or Watch to learn:
    • Why saying "I'm good" trains your boss to stop offering help
    • The Benjamin Franklin Effect: how small asks build the relationship
    • Sponsorship vs. Mentorship: which gets you promoted
    • Why your impediment backlog is your best source
    • The difference between advocacy/visibility and credit-grabbing

    This episode is for you if you're an individual contributor, team leads, or just someone who's ever felt frozen when offered help.

    #CareerDevelopment #WorkplaceCommunication #Sponsorship

    Transformed by Marty Cagan, Influence by Robert Cialdini, Benjamin Franklin autobiography, Sylvia Ann Hewlett (sponsorship research), L. David Marquet

    LINKS
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@arguingagile
    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/362QvYORmtZRKAeTAE57v3
    Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-podcast/id1568557596

    INTRO MUSIC
    Toronto Is My Beat
    By Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)
    CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)
    Show More Show Less
    47 mins
  • AA262 - HBR Says Consensus Is Dead (And Proved It With Consensus)
    Jun 24 2026

    A PE bankruptcy specialist and BCG partner walk into a bar...

    Just kidding, they walked into HBR... and they're trying to sell you a framework!

    Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Leader Om Patel dissect the April HBR piece arguing that "consensus decision-making doesn't work in the AI era." By the end, you'll spot the sales funnel dressed as thought leadership, understand who profits from "autonomous scrum," and (hopefully) never read a management article the same way again.

    Listen or Watch as we discuss and debate:
    • Why the OVIS framework is RACI in a trench coat
    • How the authors' try to undermine building consensus
    • What "autonomous scrum" is (it's just scrum)
    • The fiduciary duty argument
    • A Peacetime/Wartime CEO concept lifted without attribution
    • Questions to ask whenever an HBR article recommends a specific consulting firm's methodology

    HBR: Decision-Making by Consensus Doesn't Work in the AI Era (Rosenthal/Zuckerman, 2026-04-07)
    https://hbr.org/2026/04/decision-making-by-consensus-doesnt-work-in-the-ai-era

    #DecisionMaking #ManagementConsulting #CorporateGovernance

    Harvard Business Review, Saybrook Capital, Boston Consulting Group, United Airlines bankruptcy 2002-2006, The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, Working Backwards by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr, RACI matrix, Jeff Bezos, Marty Cagan

    LINKS
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@arguingagile
    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/362QvYORmtZRKAeTAE57v3
    Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-podcast/id1568557596

    INTRO MUSIC
    Toronto Is My Beat
    By Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)
    CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 6 mins
  • AA261 - The Business Was Dying While Every Dashboard Was Green
    Jun 10 2026

    The damage from your Q1 goal doesn't show up until Q3, on someone else's dashboard, after the person who flagged it got fired.

    Part 2 of the Outcome Trap series. Brian and Om argue why you can't see the trap from inside it: second-order effects land too late to trace, the people who spot trouble get removed, and the truth fractures across team dashboards until nobody owns the whole picture. By the end you'll have questions to ask before any number you set quietly destroys the business.

    Listen or watch as we discuss and debate:

    • Why Goodhart's Law turns every new leading indicator into another surface to game
    • How Sears split into 40 competing units and imploded while every department hit its OKRs
    • The Wells Fargo whistleblower fired for 'tardiness' eight days after calling the ethics hotline
    • Why Deming's 1986 warning to eliminate numerical goals got ignored for forty years
    • Two questions to ask before setting any target

    If you've ever been in a company where every conceivable metric was green while the business slowly bleed out, this podcast is for you!.

    #OKRs #Deming #GoodhartsLaw

    W. Edwards Deming (Out of the Crisis, The New Economics), Goodhart's Law, Peter Senge The Fifth Discipline, The People's Republic of Walmart, Sears (Eddie Lampert), Wells Fargo (Bill Bado), Frances Haugen Facebook testimony, Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

    LINKS
    YouTube: https://youtu.be/BuWgxH8VpRI
    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/362QvYORmtZRKAeTAE57v3
    Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-podcast/id1568557596

    INTRO MUSIC
    Toronto Is My Beat
    By Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)
    CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

    Show More Show Less
    57 mins
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet