TL; DR: SVPG Product Change Approach — Food for Agile Thought #493
Welcome to the 493rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,639 peers. This week, John Cutler explores how SVPG product change approach by framing executive challenges as leadership strengths, stressing that change agents must master timing, framing, and credibility. Cedric Chin asserts that authentic demand—not just value propositions—predicts startup success, while Roman Pichler presents the Innovation Ambition Matrix for strategic innovation. Also, Barry O’Reilly urges leaders to see AI as leverage, not a cure-all, and Oliver Schilke and Martin Reimann’s research highlights the paradox of disclosing AI use: transparency erodes trust, but concealment risks harsher backlash.
Next, David Pereira cautions that AI amplifies dysfunction if leaders neglect culture and strategy, while Peter Yang identifies five ways to future-proof your product career. Zvi Mowshowitz contends that AI-enabled student cheating reveals education’s core flaws. An AWS study finds AI prioritized over security, and Andy Cleff shows how nature’s distributed leadership inspires resilient, adaptive organizations.
Lastly, Charles Lambdin examines how narrative “sorcery” shapes power in organizations, while Alex Ewerlöf challenges Staff+ role rigidity, advocating for versatile engineers. Nir Eyal offers strategies to escape approval-seeking, and Gregor Ojstersek shares how AI elevates engineering leadership. Finally, Mike Loukides explores “vibe coding,” urging us to embrace efficiency but remain accountable for code quality and learning.
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: SVPG Product Change Approach
: The Genius of SVPG
John Cutler unpacks SVPG’s genius: They drive executive-friendly product change by framing challenges as leadership strengths, not threats, reminding change agents that timing, framing, and external credibility matter as much as the message itself.
🎯 Product
(via Commonplace): The Heart of Innovation: Why Most Startups Fail
Cedric Chin argues most startups fail not due to value propositions or pain points but because they never discover “authentic demand:” specific situations where customers truly cannot ‘not buy,’ despite good intentions, effort, or technology. Authentic demand, not conventional product-market fit, is the real predictor of success.
: The Innovation Ambition Matrix
Roman Pichler explains the Innovation Ambition Matrix—a framework distinguishing core, adjacent, and disruptive innovations—to help leaders make better strategic decisions and balance product portfolios for sustainable growth and future opportunities.
: Why AI Is Dangerous for Most Teams
David Pereira warns that AI accelerates dysfunction for teams lacking strong foundations. He urges leaders to address culture, strategy, and decision-making first, then use AI as a tool, not an autopilot, for real improvement.
: 5 Practical Steps to Future Proof Your Career in the AI Era
Peter Yang shares five trends to future-proof your product career in the AI era: specialize or generalize, use AI to expand skills, manage AI agents, build high agency, and automate tedious tasks for more impact.
🧠 Artificial Intelligence
(via The Conversation): Being honest about using AI at work makes people trust you less, research finds
Oliver Schilke and Martin Reimann’s research reveals a paradox: disclosing AI use at work actually reduces trust, yet hiding it risks even greater backlash if discovered, highlighting a tricky transparency dilemma for professionals.
: Cheaters Gonna Cheat Cheat Cheat Cheat Cheat
Zvi Mowshowitz explores AI-enabled student cheating, arguing it’s a symptom of broken education and misplaced incentives. True learning and signaling suffer when assignments lack real value; AI’s disruption forces radical reassessment.
: Optimizing Personal Productivity with AI: A Leader’s Guide
Barry O’Reilly shares how adopting AI transformed his overwhelmed leadership, urging leaders to treat AI as leverage, not a magic fix. Instead, focus on strategy, clarify outcomes, and design workflows before automating for real impact.
(via Amazon Web Services): Generative AI Adoption Index: This study surveyed 3,739 senior IT decision-makers in nine countries across industries
An AWS global study finds organizations now prioritize generative AI over security, with 60% appointing Chief AI Officers and 92% planning AI-skilled hiring, favoring hybrid approaches that blend proprietary data with customizable AI models.
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Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 AI for Agile BootCamp Cohort #1 — September 4-25, 2025.
Customer Voice: “The AI for Agilists course is an absolute essential for anyone working in the field! If you want to keep up with the organizations and teams you support, this course will equip you with not only knowledge of how to leverage AI for your work as an Agilist but will also give you endless tips & tricks to get better results and outcomes. I thoroughly enjoyed the course content, structure, and activities. Working in teams to apply what we learned was the best part, as it led to great insights for how I could apply what I was learning. After the first day on the course, I already walked away with many things I could apply at work. I highly recommend this course to anyone looking to better understand AI in general, but more specifically, how to leverage AI for Agility.” (Lauren Tuffs, Change Leader | Business Agility.)
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➿ Agile & Leadership
: There is No CEO Tree in the Forest: How Ecosystems Distribute Leadership
Andy Cleff explores how nature’s distributed leadership—from starling murmurations to ant colonies—offers superior organizational models. Adaptability, resilience, and innovation arise from emergent coordination, not top-down control.
: Corporate Sorcery
Charles Lambdin explores how narrative “sorcery” shapes meaning and power in academia and corporations, arguing that leadership relies on euphemistic storytelling to manage perceptions, thus making critical theory vital for seeing and challenging dominant narratives.
: Staff archetypes are anti-patterns
Alex Ewerlöf argues that Staff+ archetypes limit impact, advocating for well-rounded engineers who flex across roles, prioritize business value, and avoid turning archetypes into rigid titles that stifle growth and effectiveness.
📯 Ethical AI in Agile: Four Guardrails Every Scrum Master Needs to Establish Now
Agile teams face ethical challenges. However, there is a path to ethical AI in Agile by establishing four pragmatic guardrails: Data Privacy (information classification), Human Value Preservation (defining AI vs. human roles), Output Validation (verification protocols), and Transparent Attribution (contribution tracking).
This lightweight framework integrates with existing practices, protecting sensitive data and human expertise while enabling teams to confidently realize AI benefits without creating separate bureaucratic processes.
Learn more: Ethical AI in Agile: Four Guardrails Every Scrum Master Needs to Establish Now.
🛠 Concepts, Practices, Tools & Measuring
: Why Seeking Approval is Killing your Potential
Nir Eyal highlights how seeking approval traps us in anxiety and limits our growth, offering five practical strategies to break free from external validation and cultivate genuine self-confidence and autonomy.
: How to Use AI to Be a Great Engineering Leader
Gregor Ojstersek gathers real-world cases from engineering leaders showing how AI boosts leadership by accelerating coding, enhancing communication, streamlining documentation, surfacing insights, and empowering managers to make more informed, high-leverage decisions.
(via O’Reilly Media): Vibing at Home
Mike Loukides explores “vibe coding,” programming exclusively via AI without touching code, and reflects on its benefits, limitations, and risks. He urges us to enjoy efficiency but warns that we remain responsible for code quality and learning.
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The post Food for Agile Thought #493: SVPG Product Change Approach, Cheaters Gonna Cheat, Why Startups Fail, Perils of Seeking Approval appeared first on Age-of-Product.com.
