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Arguing Agile: Product Management, Business Leadership, & Org Design
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.
Episodes
263 episodes
AA263 - "Nothing" Is The Most Expensive Word In Your Career
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, ...
AA262 - HBR Says Consensus Is Dead (And Proved It With Consensus)
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 ...
AA261 - The Business Was Dying While Every Dashboard Was Green
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 ...
AA260 - How Outcome-Based Goals Become a Permission Slip for Evil
The thing everyone agrees is the right way to work has quietly produced some of the worst corporate ethics violations in modern history.Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Leader Om Patel discuss and debate how...
AA259 - The Memo IS the Strategy (And How You MIGHT Be Running It Too)
Six companies, seven days, same playbook. Welcome to the modern age where the excuses are interchangeable, the points don't matter, and ALL the strategies are not-so-secretly the same! Listen or watch as Product Manager Brian Orlan...
AA258 - AI Is Supercharging the Feature Factory (New 2026 Report)
Is AI actually helping us escape the build trap, or just helping us build the wrong things faster?In this episode of Arguing Agile, hosts Brian Orlando and Om Patel discuss the new AI4Agile Practitioners Report 2026 from Scrum.org. The ...
AA257 - State of Agile Report 2026: Is the Industry a 'Market for Lemons'?
Is the State of Agile Report a clear-eyed snapshot of the industry - or a sales brochure? In this episode of Arguing Agile, hosts Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel are joined by retur...
AA256 - The AI PM Competency Trap: Why AI Tools Won't Save Your Product Career
Every PM is scrambling to learn AI tools - but is that a trap? In this episode of Arguing Agile, hosts Brian Orlando and Om Patel summarize Shreyas Doshi's provocative article "Why Product Sense Is the Only Product Skill That Will ...
AA255 - What is Business Agility? The 5 Core Capabilities to Master
Stop burning time and money on agile theater! In this podcast, Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel strip business agility back to its absolute basics: no buzzwords, no frameworks - just the organiza...
AA254 - QA Is Dead!?! Why a MASSIVE QA Boom Is Coming
Businesses killed QA with bad org design, but with AI, is there potential for a near-term QA boom?Join Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel as we discuss the systematic elimination of QA role...
AA253 - The Delayering Disaster: Why Cutting Middle Management Is Blowing Up
Meta and Amazon are cutting managers, but is it efficiency or chaos?Is de-layering, or flattening your org chart, good for a company, or is it a recipe for destruction?Join Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business A...
AA252 - The IKEA Effect: Why You Love Your Bad Product Ideas
Stop building products nobody wants by discovering the psychological bias killing your strategy!Today, Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Coach Om Patel are taking on the "IKEA Effect." The IKEA effect is...
AA251 - AI Product Managers Are Just Product Managers
AI product manager jobs are everywhere - but are they really different from regular PM roles? In this episode of Arguing Agile, Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel wade deep into the mu...
AA250 - CEOs Admit There's No AI ROI (But Keep Buying It Anyway)
AI had little to no impact on productivity in the past 3 years.This was according to a National Bureau of Economic Research survey released in February 2006 of 6,000 CEOs and executives across the US, UK, Germany, and Australia.
AA249 - Disagree & Commit: Corporate Gaslighting? (And What To Do About It)
Is Amazon's famous leadership principle being weaponized against you? Join Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel as we talk about how "disagree and commit" becomes "shut up and obey" in m...
AA248 - Expertise Overreach: Why Being Right ONCE Makes Leaders Think They're Right About EVERYTHING
Your boss's biggest career win might be setting them up for their biggest failure. 🚨Listen or watch as hosts Brian Orlando and Om Patel tackle a phenomenon that's rampant in tech but rarely named: Expertise Overreach: when someone's suc...
AA247 - AI is a Poor Team-Player: Stanford's CooperBench Experiment
AI agents failed spectacularly at teamwork, performing ~50% worse than one solo agent!This week, we're discussing Stanford’s CooperBench study (a benchmark, testing whether AI agents can collaborate on real coding tasks across Python, T...
AA246 - The Spotify Model: The Viral Org Design That NEVER Existed
Spotify never used the Spotify Model - and neither should you. In this $2 billion episode, Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel take a cutting torch to one of big-A-Agile's most beloved ...
AA245 - Legacy Code: Why Big Rewrites Fail (And What Actually Works)
Legacy systems work. So why do companies waste millions rewriting them? In this episode of Arguing Agile, Product Manager Nisha Patel joins Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel for a deb...
AA244 - Why Your Meetings SUCK (And How to Fix Them) | Patrick Lencioni: Death by Meeting
Your meetings aren't boring because there are too many; they're boring because they lack drama, structure, and purpose!That's the claim made by Patrick Lencioni's book: Death by Meeting (2004)! Watch or listen as Product Manager Brian Orla...
AA243 - How Corporate Turns Good People Bad: The Neuroscience of Power Corruption
Does getting promoted literally rewire your brain to lose empathy? The science says YES. 🧠In this research-backed episode of Arguing Agile, Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel e...
AA242 - Move Fast & Break Things: The Dark Side of Silicon Valley's Favorite Mantra
Is 'Move Fast & Break Things' just permission to be reckless?Join Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel as they examine Mark Zuckerberg's (in)famous mantra and reveal how it may have metas...
AA241 - Product Risk: How Assumptions Kill Your Product (and Your Company, Eventually)
Stop wasting time building the wrong thing faster!In this episode of Arguing Agile, Product Manager: Brian Orlando and Business Agility Coach to THE STARS: Om Patel respond to yet another listener question, discussing Product Risk Analy...
AA240 - Why Product Managers & Solution Architects Are Always at War (And How to Fix It)
Is your solution architect a gatekeeper or an enabler? Join Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel as they draw from their experiences to debate the reasons these roles - which should be n...
AA239 - Why Your Company Never Learns from Lost Deals (And How to Fix It)
Lost a $2M deal and nobody discussed why? You're not alone!Your company is running on hope, not learning.Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel are discussing the potentially career-lim...
