The Spotify Model failed at Spotify for making the wrong tradeoffs.

It was aspirational and incomplete, with a lot of polish and marketing for recruitment purposes. The parts of it that did make it into practice have taken years to root out of the organization. The focus of autonomy at the exclusion of control and cooperation components made a 1-variable design organization. This is an important lesson in organization design not solving for core problems.rL3


  1. Jeremiah Lee, “Spotify’s Failed #SquadGoals,” April 19, 2020, https://www.jeremiahlee.com/posts/failed-squad-goals/. (See notes.)