The timelessness of management

Explore the enduring principles of management that transcend time and technology, shaping effective organizational practices across eras.

“While each organization is unique, common patterns of mindsets and processes appear over time, often associated with different technologies, in different contexts and eras. While the patterns of management vary widely, the concept of management is timeless.”
—A New Way To Depict Digital Transformation

Featured writing

The agent-shaped org chart

Every real org has the same topology: principal, role-holder, specialists. Staff AI maps onto it, node for node, and the cost collapse shows up in the deliverables that were always just human-handoff overhead.

AI as staff, not software

Two frames for what AI is doing to work. The tool frame makes tools smarter. The staff frame makes roles unnecessary. Those aren't the same product, the same company, or the same industry.

Knowledge work was never work

Knowledge work was always coordination between humans who couldn't share state directly. The artifacts were never the work. They were the overhead — and AI just made the overhead optional.

Books

The work of being available now

A book on AI, judgment, and staying human at work.

The practice of work in progress

Practical essays on how work actually gets done.

Recent writing

How do I get my dev team to adopt AI?

A stub on helping mixed-interest development teams find their own useful ways into AI.

Want to learn about agents? Talk to someone who ran an agency.

I spent 20 years running consulting engagements at Fortune 500 companies. Turns out that's the best preparation for running a fleet of AI agents ... because the problems are identical.

Your AI agents need a water cooler

We run a twelve-session AI fleet that coordinates through an IRC breakroom. A friend asked: why are you making AI agents act like humans? The answer turned out to be more interesting than the question.

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