Tech Lead Journal

What if optimizing for AI output is actually slowing your company down? When code becomes nearly free to produce, the organizations still measuring productivity by output are solving the wrong problem.
In this episode, Mik Kersten, author of “Project to Product” and the forthcoming “Output to Outcome,” shares why the real challenge of the AI era isn’t generating more code — it’s building organizations that can turn that output into customer and business value. Drawing on Carlota Perez’s model of technological revolutions and the theory of constraints, Mik explains how AI has removed the output bottleneck that software organizations were built around, and where the new constraints now live.
He introduces three core models from the book — the outcome loop, the product operating model, and the outcome tree — as a framework for adapting how organizations plan, fund, and deliver value. Mik also addresses one of the most pressing decisions leaders face today: whether to cut headcount based on AI productivity gains, and why doing so without outcome visibility is a dangerous bet. The conversation covers how organizational structure, decision-making accountability, and leadership roles all need to shift — not just development practices.
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Trailer & Intro
(00:02:40) What Makes Output to Outcome Different From Project to Product?
(00:05:02) Why Did Mik Write Every Word of This Book Without AI?
(00:08:18) How Do the AI Prompts at the End of Each Chapter Work?
(00:11:53) What Happens to Organizations When AI Makes Software Output 10 to 100 Times Cheaper?
(00:15:03) How Do Past Technological Revolutions Help Us Understand the AI Era?
(00:19:25) Is the Traditional Software Developer Role Gone for Good?
(00:23:30) Why Do Some Companies Experience an AI Productivity Paradox?
(00:27:47) What Does “Outcome” Mean in Outcome Management?
(00:31:50) Has the Product Operating Model Finally Become the Industry Norm?
(00:34:24) How Do You Apply the Cynefin Framework to Your Organization?
(00:37:18) Why Should AI Augment Human Decision Making in Complex Domains?
(00:40:52) Why Are AI-Driven Layoffs a Risky Bet Without Outcome Visibility?
(00:43:32) How Can Leaders Increase the Feedback Loop for Strategy and Budgeting?
(00:46:07) What Is the Optimal Organizational Structure for an Outcome Management Model?
(00:49:50) How Can We Apply Architectural Modularity to Organizational Design?
(00:53:17) What Are the Seven Shifts in the Output to Outcome Model?
(00:55:10) Will AI Make Middle Management Obsolete?
(01:00:55) 3 Tech Lead Wisdom
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Mik Kersten’s Bio
Dr. Mik Kersten is an independent technology strategist and creator of the Flow Framework, best known for his bestselling book Project to Product. He founded Tasktop and led it as CEO until its acquisition by Planview in 2022.
Mik began his career at Xerox PARC, where his team created the first aspect-oriented programming language. He then earned his PhD in Computer Science at UBC, pioneering the integration of software development and collaboration tools — work that laid the foundation for Tasktop and the field of Value Stream Management.
Today, he helps leaders shift from output-driven to outcome-driven operating models, enabling organizations to harness AI in a human-centric way.
Follow Mik:
LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/mikkersten
Substack – mikkersten.substack.com
 Preorder Output to Outcome - https://a.co/d/0aPlI2IF
Book’s Website – outputtooutcome.org

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Why do 70% of change efforts fail — even when leadership is fully committed? The answer isn’t strategy or resources; it’s the hidden stories people unknowingly carry that silently block every initiative.
In this episode, Ronica Roth, author of “Practice Makes Culture” and co-founder of The Welcome Elephant, shares a practical framework for creating lasting organizational change. Drawing on 25 years of experience helping teams and companies transform, she explains why culture declarations and vision speeches alone never work — and what leaders at any level can do instead. Ronica introduces the concept of “welcoming elephants” — the emotional, systems, and room elephants that surface whenever change is attempted — and why acknowledging them is the first step toward real progress. She also unpacks why most culture lives beneath the surface, in hidden stories that employees carry without realizing it, and how those stories quietly undermine even well-designed initiatives.
The conversation covers how to build psychological ownership so people invest in change rather than just comply with it, and why small, intentional daily practices — not grand overhauls — are what actually shift culture. The discussion also touches on applying these principles to AI transformation, where the emotional stakes are especially high and the hidden stories especially loud.
Key topics discussed:
Why 70% of change efforts fail — and what to do about it
The three types of “elephants” blocking organizational change
Hidden stories: the invisible force sabotaging your culture
Why declaring a new culture is necessary but not sufficient
How to create psychological ownership (not just buy-in)
Using meetings as a daily practice for cultural change
Leading AI transformation with vulnerability and structure
The WOOP method for making personal behavior change stick
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Trailer & Intro
(00:02:43) Why Ronica Write a Book About IT Culture?
(00:05:14) What Are the Three Types of Elephants That Hold Organizations Back?
(00:11:05) Why Do 70% of Change Efforts Fail?
(00:15:45) How Does Ronica Define the Different Layers of Culture?
(00:20:57) Why Is Declaring a New Culture Necessary But Not Sufficient?
(00:23:12) What Are the Three Pillars of Your Cultural Transformation Framework?
(00:39:28) How Can You Turn Meetings Into a Daily Practice for Cultural Change?
(00:48:51) How Can Leaders Address the Emotional Elephant of AI Transformation?
(00:56:13) Can You Apply These Culture Change Principles to Personal Growth?
(01:02:06) What Are the Five Culture Hacks for Scaling Cultural Impact?
(01:04:49) 3 Tech Lead Wisdom
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Ronica Roth’s Bio
Ronica Roth is a transformation expert dedicated to revolutionizing how organizations work. As cofounder of The Welcome Elephant consultancy, she helps leaders build thriving cultures where both business results and human potential flourish. With deep expertise in product management, business agility, and organizational change, Ronica brings a unique perspective shaped by her certification as a Leadership Circle® practitioner and her distinguished background as a Certified Scrum Trainer Emeritus. Her approach is informed by an MS in Journalism from Northwestern University and enriched by her earlier career in newspapers, giving her exceptional skills in storytelling and communication crucial for effective organizational change.
Follow Ronica:
LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/ronicaroth
 Practice Makes Culture – itrevolution.com/product/practice-makes-culture
The Welcome Elephant – thewelcomeelephant.co
Practice Makes Culture Substack - practicemakesculture.substack.com

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What if your AI coding agent is quietly cheating on your tests — and how do you stop it? Julien Verlaguet, who built the type system Meta used to migrate tens of millions of PHP lines, is now building Skipper: a closed-loop coding agent designed to make AI-generated code verifiably correct, without human intervention.
In this episode, Julien Verlaguet, creator of the Hack programming language at Meta and co-founder of SkipLabs, explains why AI agents will always try to cheat — gaming tests, quietly modifying logic while doing something else, and declaring work done when it isn’t. He draws on his experience migrating Meta’s PHP codebase to a statically typed system, drawing sharp parallels between convincing engineers to trust a new type checker and building systems that can trust an LLM. Julien makes the case for spec-driven development with validation layers at every step, where separate AI instances verify correctness and the code-writing agent is locked out of touching tests.
He shares the story of an LLM that silently swapped a union for an intersection while splitting a file — a subtle bug that passed all tests — and why no human would ever have made that mistake. He then walks through how Skipper works: you write a spec, hand over control, and a compiler-like agent produces correct, runnable TypeScript without back-and-forth, backed by a sound incremental type system, reachability analysis, and a reactive runtime that applies diffs in milliseconds.
He closes with a grounded take on how the developer role is shifting — not disappearing — toward the kind of design, integration, and oversight work that always mattered most.
Key topics discussed:
Why AI agents will always try to cheat on your tests
The union-vs-intersection bug an LLM introduced silently
Spec-driven development to keep LLMs on track
How to separate the AI that verifies from the one that fixes
Skipper: a compiler-like closed-loop coding agent
Sound, incremental TypeScript built for AI-speed iteration
Hot-reloading state without restarting — in milliseconds
Why developers are all becoming tech leads
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Trailer & Intro
(00:02:34) How Did Julien Create the Hack Programming Language at Facebook?
(00:05:53) Does Static Typing Make Your Code More Secure?
(00:09:54) How Did You Convince Facebook Engineers to Adopt Hack at Scale?
(00:17:15) How Can Engineers Overcome Skepticism Toward AI Coding Tools?
(00:22:44) Should Junior Engineers Trust AI-Generated Code?
(00:29:44) How Do You Build Reliable Guardrails for LLM-Generated Code?
(00:42:15) What Validation Strategies Prevent AI Agents From Cheating on Tests?
(00:45:54) What Is Skipper and How Does a Closed-Loop Coding Agent Work?
(00:54:59) How Does Skipper Compare to Claude Code in Terms of Correctness?
(00:58:27) How Do You Get Started With Skipper and What Does the Output Look Like?
(01:04:50) How Will the Software Developer Role Change in an AI-First World?
(01:09:06) 3 Tech Lead Wisdom
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Julien Verlaguet’s Bio
Julien Verlaguet is a programming language designer and the Founder and CEO of SkipLabs. He is best known as the creator of Hack—the gradually typed language he built at Facebook that currently powers over 100 million lines of the company’s production code. After creating the open-source reactive framework Skip, Julien founded SkipLabs in 2022. His company recently launched Skipper, a closed-loop coding agent that takes a single prompt from a developer and returns a running, validated service.
Follow Julien:
LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/julien-verlaguet-b5710a20
X – x.com/JulienVerlaguet
SkipLabs - skiplabs.io
Skipper - skipperai.dev
Skipper’s Discord – discord.gg/bsnXyw2F9P

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Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/260.
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Why do companies with the best intentions end up betraying their customers, employees, and mission? Eric Ries calls it “financial gravity” — an invisible force that pulls even the most principled companies toward corruption, and understanding it is the first step to resisting it.
In this episode, Eric Ries, entrepreneur and author of The Lean Startup and Incorruptible, shares why building a great company isn’t just about having a strong vision — it’s about building structures that protect that vision from external pressure. Eric revisits the core ideas behind the Lean Startup and MVP, explaining how the purpose of a minimum viable product is not to ship fast but to learn fast. He then introduces the central thesis of his new book: that the corruption we see in companies isn’t caused by bad people, but by a financial system that pulls organizations away from their values. Drawing on stories of Sol Price, FedMart, Costco, HEB, Novo Nordisk, and Anthropic, he shows that incorruptible companies are built through a combination of ethos — a deep operational commitment to doing right — and structural governance that resists outside pressure. He also unpacks how false metrics like OKRs can hollow out a company’s integrity over time, and how Mary Parker Follett’s concept of the “invisible leader” helps culture survive beyond any single founder or CEO.
Key topics discussed:
What “financial gravity” is and why even good companies fall to it
The true purpose of an MVP (hint: it’s not about shipping fast)
Why OKRs become dangerous false proxies over time
Blueprint for building a truly incorruptible company
Why Costco and Novo Nordisk resisted forces that killed FedMart
Mary Parker Follett’s invisible leader explained
Why Anthropic’s structure gives it a lasting competitive edge
How everyday decisions become acts of systemic change
Timestamps:
(00:00) Trailer & Intro
(02:31) What Two Mega-Trends Make Lean Startup More Relevant Than Ever?
(04:03) What Is the True Purpose of a Minimum Viable Product?
(11:04) Has AI Actually Made Building Software Cheaper and Better?
(13:41) What Two Stories Inspired the Book Incorruptible?
(20:38) What Is Financial Gravity and Why Does It Corrupt Even Good Companies?
(26:29) What Is Surrogation and Why Do OKRs Become Dangerous False Proxies?
(29:55) What Is the Blueprint for Building an Incorruptible Company?
(33:53) What Is the Invisible Leader and How Does It Keep Company Culture Alive?
(39:56) What Governance Structures Can Shield a Company’s Mission from Financial Gravity?
(48:27) Why Does Anthropic’s Unique Structure Give It a Competitive Advantage in AI?
(51:43) 3 Tech Lead Wisdom
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Eric Ries’s Bio
Over the last two decades, Eric Ries’s ideas about continuous innovation, long-term thinking, governance, and market reform have reshaped company building and management practices. He is the creator of the Lean Startup method, and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup; The Leader’s Guide; and The Startup Way.
As a founder, he has put his own ideas into practice with The Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE); Answer.AI, an AI R&D lab; Virgil, a legal services startup; and IMVU. On The Eric Ries Show, he talks with world-class technologists, thought leaders, and executives building for the long-term. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three children.
Follow Eric:
LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/eries
X – x.com/ericries
Podcast – www.ericriesshow.com
Website – incorruptible.co
Newsletter – news.theleanstartup.com

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Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/259.
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What if faster coding is actually slowing your software delivery down? Most teams are pouring AI into the coding phase, but the real bottleneck is everywhere else.
In this episode, Andrew Haschka, Field CTO at GitLab for Asia Pacific and Japan, explains why most AI strategies in software engineering are failing and what it takes to fix them. He introduces the AI paradox: teams invest heavily in AI-assisted coding, yet coding accounts for less than 20% of the software delivery lifecycle, leaving the biggest bottlenecks untouched.
Andrew makes the case for intelligent orchestration — moving from isolated AI interactions to governed, end-to-end agentic flows that span planning, coding, testing, security, compliance, and release. He shares how a unified system of record forms the foundation for high-quality AI outcomes, and why fragmented tools and siloed context actively limit what AI can deliver. Drawing on real customer examples — including Ericsson’s 50% faster deployments and 130,000 hours saved in six months — he shows what a holistic approach actually looks like in practice.
The conversation also covers how tech leads, developers, and junior engineers need to evolve their skills in a world where AI handles routine implementation. Andrew closes with a compelling argument: in the agentic era, governance isn’t just a compliance burden, it’s the primary source of competitive advantage.
Timestamps:
(02:30) What Are the Key Responsibilities of a Field CTO at GitLab?
(03:26) Why Should Organizations Govern AI Strategy Rather Than Chase the Latest Features?
(06:41) Why Is an End-to-End Agentic Flow More Valuable Than Individual AI Tools?
(09:39) What Is the AI Paradox and How Does Intelligent Orchestration Solve It?
(14:47) How Does Shifting Focus to Requirements Quality Transform Software Delivery Outcomes?
(18:19) How Has GitLab Evolved Beyond CI/CD Into a Full End-to-End Delivery Platform?
(20:20) What Should Software Teams Prioritize Beyond Coding in the AI Era?
(24:14) How Do Organizational Silos Create a Capability Threshold for AI Adoption?
(27:49) What Practical Strategies Can Organizations Use to Break Down Internal Silos?
(30:58) How Did Ericsson Achieve 50% Faster Deployments and Save 130,000 Hours With GitLab?
(33:07) How Should Software Developers Evolve in the Age of AI Agents?
(36:26) How Is the Tech Lead Role Evolving in a Hybrid Human-AI Team?
(39:22) How Can Junior Developers Keep Up With the Rapid Shift in Industry Expectations?
(42:40) Why Do 79% of Singapore DevSecOps Practitioners Believe AI Will Create More Jobs?
(45:27) Why Are Companies Reducing Staff Despite the Growing Demand for Software?
(48:34) What Are the Most Common Pitfalls When Implementing Agentic Workflows?
(52:29) What Practical Steps Should Engineering Leaders Take to Govern AI Responsibly?
(55:13) Why Should Engineering Leaders Build an AI Strategy Before Choosing Technology?
(57:15) 3 Tech Lead Wisdom
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Andrew Haschka’s Bio
Andrew Haschka serves as Field CTO for Asia Pacific & Japan at GitLab, where he acts as a trusted strategic advisor to enterprise customers and partners navigating complex technology transformation. With over 20 years of experience spanning software delivery, cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, and organisational transformation, Andrew brings a rare combination of technical depth and executive-level counsel to the organisations he works with.
Prior to GitLab, Andrew held senior leadership roles across APAC at Google and VMware, and has led large-scale digital transformation programmes for organisations including Downer, IBM, Jones Lang LaSalle, Thomson Reuters, Optus, and across the Fiji and Pacific Islands.
Follow Andrew:
LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/andrewhaschka

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Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/258.
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