TL; DR: Reflexive AI Usage — Food for Agile Thought #488
Welcome to the 488th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,671 peers. This week, Tobi Lütke calls for reflexive AI usage as a baseline at Shopify, positioning it as a creative and productivity multiplier. Jeremy Brown offers human-centered principles for product–engineering ownership that avoid RACI wars. Aakash Gupta shows how OpenAI and Notion treat experimentation as strategic infrastructure, and Roman Pichler explores AI’s role in product strategy, emphasizing its benefits while reinforcing the irreplaceable role of human judgment. Meanwhile, the 2025 AI Index Report reveals explosive AI progress and investment and flags persistent global gaps in regulation, education, and reasoning performance.
Next, John Cutler unpacks how flawed models and stale dashboards hinder creating shared understanding at scale. Mark Graban explains why psychological safety is key to Lean success, not a nice-to-have. Mike Cottmeyer and Eric Flecher connect AI readiness to the same structural shifts required for real agility. Also, Pim de Morree makes a strong case for replacing hierarchy with well-supported self-management.
Lastly, Wes Kao shares actionable tactics with Lenny Rachitsky for clearer, more persuasive communication—especially when managing up or handling objections. Abby Covert reminds us that stakeholder misalignment, not poor structure, derails excellent information architecture. Hyunsun Park and Subra Tangirala reveal why ambiguity silences employees; they call for cultures where sensing risk isn’t just leadership’s job.
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This week, the most popular discussion on LinkedIn was: Scrum Masters, are you working too much?
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Reflexive AI Usage
: Reflexive AI usage is now a baseline expectation at Shopify
Tobi Lütke declares AI proficiency a core expectation at Shopify, urging all employees to integrate reflexive AI use into daily work as a multiplier of creativity, productivity, and entrepreneurial impact.
🎯 Product
: Product and Engineering: Who Owns What?
Jeremy Brown lays out simple, human-first principles for defining product vs. engineering ownership—without killing collaboration, innovation, or morale—because no one wants a team split by a RACI matrix war.
: How to Build a Scaled Experimentation Engine
Aakash Gupta reveals how companies like OpenAI and Notion scale product impact through trustworthy experiments, institutional memory, and strong data culture, turning experimentation from a tactic into a strategic organizational superpower.
: AI and Product Strategy
Roman Pichler explores how AI can enhance product strategy—boosting research, differentiation, and performance tracking—while warning that human judgment, empathy, and solid practices remain essential for truly effective strategic decisions.
🧠 Artificial Intelligence
: Future-Ready: Thriving in the Age of AI
‘AI won’t replace you—you’ll be replaced by someone who uses it well.’ Deb Liu shares how to stay relevant in the AI era: adapt fast, ask better questions, and remain human.
(via Stanford HAI): The 2025 AI Index Report
The 2025 AI Index Report shows AI accelerating across benchmarks, investment, and global adoption—yet challenges like reasoning, regulation gaps, and education disparities prove the transformation is powerful but far from evenly distributed.
: 🎙 AI Agents, what founders need to know about building AI products, and Ethical implications of AI—Morten Rand-Hendriksen (Linkedin)
Afonso Franco interviews Morten Rand-Hendriksen on AI agents, misuse of language models, ethical pitfalls, and why founders may be building on shaky ground—an essential listen for anyone navigating AI’s promises and perils.
🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — April 24, 2025
The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) training by Berlin Product People is a one-day official Scrum.org facilitation class for advanced Scrum practitioners and agile coaches, including the industry-acknowledged PSFS certification. The PSFS training class is designed as a live virtual class and will be in English.
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Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — April 24, 2025.
Customer Voice: “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.” (Source.)
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➿ Agile & Leadership
: How Psychological Safety Drives Digital Transformation and the Toyota Production System (or Lean)
Mark Graban explores how psychological safety is foundational to Toyota’s approach to Lean and digital transformation, arguing it’s not softness but a prerequisite for innovation, learning, and sustainable cultural change.
: Shared Understanding At Scale
Information models shape power and clarity. John Cutler breaks down why goal cascades go stale, dashboards deceive, loops mislead, and why there’s no one roadmap view to rule them all.
(via Corporate Rebels): The Tech Stack That Makes Hierarchy Obsolete
Pim de Morree argues that hierarchy isn’t inevitable—just outdated. With the right tech stack, self-managed teams can thrive through clarity, transparency, and autonomy—no middle managers are required, but maybe some good Wi-Fi.
(via Leading Agile): 📺 The Nonobvious Line Between Business Agility and AI Readiness
In his talk with Eric Flecher, Mike Cottmeyer highlights that AI readiness demands the same foundational changes as business agility—breaking silos, reducing cognitive load, and aligning teams, tech, and data around clear, value-driven outcomes.
📯 Change Questions, The Agile Way, Humans Robots Agents — Hands-on Agile 2025
The first videos of Hands-On Agile 2025 sessions are in, and you don’t want to miss them: Dr. Lynn Kelley reveals her “Change Questions” framework with its remarkable 90% success rate for sustainable organizational transformation, while Peter Merel challenges conventional agile thinking with “The Agile Way,” connecting ancient wisdom to modern AI-agile alignment through six essential themes. Also, Jurgen Appelo explores how AI is revolutionizing leadership in “Humans Robots Agents,” offering practical strategies for thriving amid technological disruption.
These industry veterans bring decades of enterprise transformation experience, providing actionable insights you can implement immediately. Watch the session recordings to transform how you approach agility.
Learn more: Change Questions, The Agile Way, Humans Robots Agents — Hands-on Agile 2025
🛠 Concepts, Practices, Tools & Measuring
and : Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact
Wes Kao joins Lenny Rachitsky to share no-fluff frameworks for sharper, high-impact communication—covering objections, brevity, executive presence, and managing up so your ideas stop dying in unread Slack threads.
: The Sensemaker’s Guide to Stakeholders
Abby Covert argues that brilliant information architecture often fails not for technical reasons but because of misaligned or ignored stakeholders. She highlights that managing people, not just structures, makes or breaks IA work.
(via Harvard Business Review): Why Employees Stay Silent When They See Warning Signs of a Problem
Hyunsun Park and Subra Tangirala explain why employees stay silent about ambiguous threats—cognitive overload and top-down decision norms—urging leaders to build cultures where uncertainty is everyone’s responsibility, not just management’s.
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Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning, for example, about Reflexive AI Usage:
- Johanna Rothman: How to Instill Agility, not Agile Practices.
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- Jurgen Appelo: Humans Robots Agents — Hands-on Agile 2025.
- Peter Merel: the agile way — Hands-on Agile 2025.
- Dr Lynn Kelley: Change Questions: The Keys to Implementing Organizational Change—Hands-on Agile 2025.
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The post Food for Agile Thought #488: Product vs Engineering, Reflexive AI Usage, Psychological Safety and Lean, Guide to Stakeholders appeared first on Age-of-Product.com.
