Five OD Things N° 13
Company as code; a city is not a computer; AI as cybernetic teammate; a field experiment rewires the org chart; when it starts feeling like a video game
Artificial Intelligence
Notes on what AI actually does to organizations, and why most predictions about it are wrong. The capability gap will be structural.
15 posts
Company as Code
Like a lot of things I write about, this is both a new and wild idea and something that's been around for a long time but hasn't really caught on. It'd be cooler if it did.
When It Starts Feeling Like a Video Game
The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences
Don't treat human systems (exclusively) as engineering problems.
INSEAD: AI Changes the Org Chart
It is an article of faith among technologists that artificial intelligence will make workers more productive. A new field experiment suggests it may do something more interesting: make them more social.
The Decision Bottleneck
More flattening, more information, not a ton of good practice around decision-making.
Anthropic’s AI constitution is an exercise in rule-of-law governance
I solemnly swear that this is not an international relations blog, nor is it an AI blog, but THINGS ARE HAPPENING
Enterprise AI is getting stuck on people
AI AI AI but also can we pour one out for Mark Carney's historic speech? Hoping saner impulses prevail and as an IR major I'm very bummed about all the Melian Dialogue stuff of late.
AI and Obsolescence: Anthropic Research
Anthropic's research into Claude Code may signal the end of ideas like "role clarity" and "opportunities for growth and development." Is that a good thing?
Five OD Things N° 12
Selling personal super-intelligence; trust & safety heading for the exits; raw compute vs. the junk drawer; Wall Street loves shrinking payrolls; the first targets are email jobs
Five Org Design Things N° 8
Turns out it's about learning, all the way down: How basic technologies shift strategy; Microsoft's org structure research; X-Teams; building Service Design capability; democracy at work
Reimagining the marketing organization in the age of generative AI
I reviewed the academic literature on the potential for AI machine learning to automate certain professional tasks. Then I compared and ranked those functions against an actual marketing org – a mere 7% of which is strongly resistant to automation.