Playbook poison

Frameworks are seductive. They promise order, efficiency, and the secrets of giants like Google. But in early-stage startups, I’ve watched them become a silent killer, creating busy work while the real problems go unsolved.

I’ve fallen for it too. The allure of implementing a shiny framework is strong when you’re surrounded by chaos. It feels productive. It feels professional. But it’s often just a distraction that leads to more problems than progress.

Big company playbooks solve big company problems

Those frameworks you admire weren’t responsible for making those companies successful. They came after success, designed to manage complexity at scale. Google didn’t start with OKRs. Spotify didn’t launch with squads and tribes.

Your startup faces entirely different challenges. You’re trying to find product-market fit, not manage thousands of engineers across multiple continents.

The playbooks that poison startups

There are many, but here are the most common ones I’ve seen and experienced myself.

1. OKRs waste precious weeks each quarter debating goals when you barely understand your market yet. I’ve watched teams spend more time refining their OKR documents than talking to customers. Meanwhile, their entire understanding of the problem could change tomorrow.
2. Spotify’s Squad Model creates artificial boundaries in a team small enough to fit around one table. I’ve seen five-person teams create elaborate Slack channels and ceremonies to mimic Spotify’s structure, only to find they’ve slowed down communication while solving for a scaling problem three years away.
3. SAFe drowns small teams in roles and ceremonies that add nothing to finding your first hundred customers. Sometimes I’ve seen companies that had more process-related meetings than customer calls. They were running a beautiful “agile” process while racing toward the wrong destination (and making the founder extremely frustrated).
4. RICE prioritization gives the illusion of data-driven decisions using inputs that are mostly fiction at the startup stage. Your “impact” and “confidence” scores are just educated guesses. Don’t let spreadsheet precision mask fundamental uncertainty.
5. Jobs to be Done sends teams down theoretical rabbit holes when they should be building. I’ve seen PMs spend months perfecting their JTBD statements without shipping a single feature that validates their thinking. At least the slide deck looked good though.

What works instead

Stop mimicking big companies. Start obsessing over customers. Real startup work looks messier.

Talk to customers constantly. Then talk to more. Nothing replaces direct learning from the people you’re trying to serve.

Ship something today. Not next quarter after your framework is implemented – today. The only prioritization that matters is: what can teach us something meaningful, as quickly as possible?

Focus on your existential metric. Early startups rarely have more than one do-or-die number at a time. Make that number visible to everyone, daily.

Solve real problems. When a customer struggle emerges, fix it immediately. Don’t wait for the next sprint planning or quarterly OKR update. Don’t get caught up in nice-to-haves.

Run toward uncertainty. Frameworks promise certainty where none exists. Successful founders embrace ambiguity and navigate it better than competitors. If it was as easy as rolling out frameworks there would be a hell of a lot more successful companies built.

The irony of it all

The irony is that those companies whose frameworks you’re adopting succeeded precisely by ignoring conventional wisdom and focusing on their unique challenges. You are following the advice of companies you admire by doing the things they didn’t do in the early days. When interviewing candidates, beware of framework enthusiasts who can’t explain how they’d solve your specific customer problems. The early team needs practical pragmatic problem-solvers, not methodology obsessed process people.

You can’t outsource breaking down your problems. Your challenges are unique. Solve them directly. The most valuable process is the one that is short-lived, letting you focus entirely on delighting customers and finding your path to growth.