One counterintuitive thing I am seeing across dozens of conversations with real economy execs: every incumbent is now a turnaround CEO, even if their business is growing, profitable and hitting plan. I wrote about the Era of the Perpetual Turnaround CEO:

The topic of organization design in an AI world seems to be a recurring theme not only with startup peers but also with CEOs of mature scaled businesses. In a quest for feedback/pushback and also to try to be helpful I wanted to share how I am thinking about org design in the age of AI: Design Principles: a) Speed of decision making and execution: As AI reduces barriers to competitive entry and increases customer expectations, survival will require ‘big’ decisions to be made quickly, and changes to be shipped immediately. In a world where agents can coordinate tasks amongst themselves instantly and 24/7, the market will expect an instant problem → response loop. Organizations need to be designed to allow for that to happen. b) Minimize layers: So much of traditional org design has been about balancing between spans-of-control, and the number of layers between executives and the lowest org levels. Spans become irrelevant in a world where executive bandwidth grows exponentially. Middle layers that exist to gate, summarize or cascade information will be irrelevant as every environmental input is converted into a piece of data, which is subsequently synthesized and acted on by PhD level AI agents. Implications: 1) End of the ‘Coach’ Only Role: Every leader will have to be a player first and coach second. When the content and nature of work are changing so quickly, the only way to be an effective coach of others is to know the work yourself. 2) The Death of Functions: In an environment where any question, regardless of how complex, is answerable with a $10/month subscription humans will no longer be defined by technical specialization. When knowledge is commoditized, roles built solely on specialization become irrelevant. 3) Impermanence: I am convinced no one really knows what the next five years will look like as AI invades our lives. As a result, org structures will be built and destroyed quarter-over-quarter if not month-over-month. 4) CEO of Control Center: The modern CEO will be less of a strategist or cheerleader, and more of an F1 driver. They will spend their days interpreting real-time telemetry, responding instantly, and orchestrating both humans and machines. It is a shift from planning to navigating. If you are building or retooling your organization in this environment: A) Treat your structure as temporary B) Redesign roles around outcomes not functions C) Hire leaders who do work, not just manage or inspire D) Decide if you want to be in the cockpit of your race car I shared these thoughts on “Org Design In An AI World” in a recent blog post. The link is shared below