People advocating for the Boris Cherny agentic engineering workflow are ignoring the true bottlenecks in software delivery, executives with a counterview and the fundamental reasons why people choose to be software engineers.

The belief that agentic engineering diminishes the importance of deep work ignores diverse perspectives about software development, the AI backlash and the true costs of generative AI.

There’s a pernicious belief that agentic engineering diminishes the importance of deep work and that engineers and knowledge workers must now embrace a distracted, interrupted and context-switched workflow. How well grounded is this theory?

Leadership isn’t only about driving business results. It’s also about shaping group identities that people thrive in, and wish to belong to.

Well-meaning executives often implicitly ask for overwork, without acknowledging that the upside for the hustle has disappeared for the average employee. To reenergise and motivate their workforces, executives must do more than just appeal to tradition. Employees must see a proportional upside.

When culture is a fuzzy concept, it’s open to interpretation. People unwittingly wield their interpretations like shields or swords. Well-documented cultures, on the other hand, are open to scrutiny yet transparent and easier to govern and co-own.

When defining corporate cultures, too much emphasis goes to the values poster or the employer value proposition. Attractive, credible cultures however, ground their messaging in strong corporate theories.

Cybernetic collaboration with AI is making us conflate speed and productivity. There’s no alternative to deep focus, even if AI promises to create outputs at “warp speed.” In 2026, leaders will serve their teams best by creating a work environment conducive to deep work.

Why not use the full complement of resources on this website, to level up your distributed leadership skills in 2025?

While attractive in marketing brochures, long tenure and close relationships in leadership teams can sometimes harm a company.

Knowledge workers are often mistrusting of processes for the corporate red-tape they create. But effective processes have their benefits.

When pointy-haired bosses run out of real arguments for a “return to office”, they turn to disingenuous corporate speak. There are many examples out there, but three of them annoy me the most.

In a psychologically safe workplace, people share feedback freely. But when feedback lands on deaf ears, it fosters feedback fatigue.

When leading a diverse team, you can’t manage everyone the same way. Depending on their skills, experience and work styles, some people may need more managerial care for them to thrive at their jobs.

Remote work impacts not only standard capitalist measures such as productivity and access to talent, but also social aspects.

Survivorship, or selection bias when telling company stories, promotes an echo chamber, where the organisation becomes blind to its inadequacies.

In many teams, distributed leadership is a neglected capability. People have unproductive experiences, because no one pays attention to the design of their distributed workplace.

All’s not well in remote work paradise. For many employees a remote work arrangement is a Faustian bargain. They have to endure the dark side of remote work.

Middle-level and people managers play a crucial role in companies, but they also model many corporate dysfunctions. It’s time for people managers to get back in service of the people they lead.

When we leave cultural characteristics open to interpretation, we run the risk of creating toxic cultures. The loudest voices usually undermine diversity. It makes more sense for distributed organisations to do the boring work of defining culture. It isn’t as sexy as a secret sauce, but writing things up fosters a consistent and healthy culture.