Where we stand
Arguments we would rather have in public
Short pieces on organisation design decisions, written the way we would put them in a document. No trend reports and no predictions.
Each one takes a position you can disagree with. That is the point of publishing them.
Best of both is the most expensive way to integrate two companies
A synergy case assumes the combined organisation is the better half of each. In practice it is a third operating model nobody has ever run, and the cost of learning it is the synergy.
Read it →
In retail, head office cost is not a head office problem
Support functions get cut one at a time, against a benchmark percentage of sales. The cost they actually create sits in the store manager’s week, and nobody owns that.
Read it →
A manager with 6 people and 12 AI agents does not have a span of 18
Span of control was a proxy for how much supervision one person can carry. AI agents break the proxy, and most organisation charts have not noticed.
Read it →
Longer piece: the four design questions AI agents actually raise, with a 30 second test of your own numbers.