Mgmt: In search of the wave?

Some time ago, I was in a late-stage discussion for a C minus one position. In one of the final calls, an executive threw me a curveball: “How do you feel about the current product hegemony?”

I gave what I thought—even in hindsight—was a pitch-perfect answer. I talked about bootstrapping Lean/Agile terminology for legacy operations, the challenges of scaling team-level models, the focus on product-led growth, and the “culture that eats strategy for breakfast.”

As I was sharing my perspective, I noticed a shift. The exec lost focus. At the time, this unexpected disinterest left me puzzled¹. I’ve been in enough of these discussions to know that such a turn can be irreversible². What had I missed?

It’s only now that I realize why I failed that conversation. I was answering a question from almost a year ago. The executive wasn’t asking me to diagnose the present; he was probing to see if I understood what comes after it.

Last week, things finally clicked.

The realization began to take shape when fellow practitioner Aleksi Rossi shared an insight from SOK’s Chief Engineer, Janne Jalkanen, regarding the impact of modern AI on a developer’s life. In my own words: Agentic AI will allow us to separate the signal from the noise. It will reduce much of the waste associated with planning, meetings, and other aspects of coordination, such as working out the details³.

This discussion led me to post half-jokingly on LinkedIn about “how we figured out what comes after Agile.”

I was only half-joking. The answer seems obvious once you see the pieces.

The “noise” is the entire Lean/Agile industrial complex. It’s the backlogs, planning sessions, stand-ups, and the whole “scaled” model, with its portfolios and team topologies. It’s the very “product hegemony” the executive was asking about.

The shift isn’t only about the cool “vibe-coding” we hear on the social media. It’s not what Gartner calls “AI-native engineering.” And it’s definitely not defined by quantifiable, clever-sounding, but ultimately transient toys like a “Quantum Backlog⁴.”

The shift we’re facing is foundational. It’s about the dissolution of human-managed processes themselves. The “static noise” of management is about to be muted—not by a better human process, but by a new paradigm that obsoletes the process. We no longer need human cogs keeping the machine running.

After I made that comment on LinkedIn, the algorithms picked it up and started suggesting related content. One of those was the Move Framework.

The Move Framework is an intriguing response to the challenges of “product hegemony,” particularly for organizations that have struggled to scale Lean and Agile.

But as I read, I quickly lost interest.

In that moment, I truly understood what the executive was looking for. The Move Framework is the perfect answer to the problems of the past decade. Its concepts, while valuable, are already becoming outdated as this new wave of technology crests.

The executive who lost focus wasn’t bored by my answer; he was disappointed by it. He was looking for someone who saw the next problem, and I was busy solving the last one.

The key lesson is this: A significant shift, comparable to the Lean/Agile movement, is already happening.

While many of today’s AI pioneers focus on delivering digital services more quickly, they often overlook the larger implications. The fundamental transformation goes beyond faster delivery or the digital; it lies in our ability to use agentic tools to orient⁵, thereby dissolving the need for management⁶ itself.

Perhaps – we can mute the noise for good.