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Papers · a book written in public
One argument, one chapter at a time.
The papers are the chapters of a book, written in public. Each starts as a recorded conversation, becomes a paper with its sources, and stays open for comment: tell us where we’re wrong, and the best responses are published. When the chapters are done, the book will be free or nearly free.
Why we’re doing this
So much hangs on how we work: our futures, our training, our education. It is so fundamental that we have to start discussing it now. We have to plan for the future, prepare our children and make sure they have the right skills, or create alternatives for a world with fewer humans in the work.
Part I
The argument
Work is coming apart
From roles to capabilities, and why every organisation will need a twin of itself first.
Part II
The building blocks
Working paper 1: The capability as an entity
Capabilities advertise themselves, serve one organisation or many, and combine into larger ones.
Working paper 2: From org charts to atomic work
Work moves from hierarchical roles to units of input → transformation → output. What happens to the org chart.
Working paper 3: Capabilities all the way down
No fixed bottom: every capability can be broken down further and reused; where splitting stops paying is measurable.
Working paper 4: A record for work
What a capability takes, makes and has failed at: verified, declared, projected.
Working paper 5: Delegate the doing
Take a process apart and turn each piece into a capability, while a person keeps the deciding.
Working paper 6: When outputs get gamed
Goodhart’s law and buying work by what it produces.
Part III
The twin and the journey
Working paper 7: Experiment on the copy
Why change needs a twin first: where to change and what to automate.
Working paper 8: A history of digital twins
From engineering to organisations, properly sourced.
Working paper 9: From twin to digital corporation
The stages, a measure for each, and taking work back.
Part IV
What happens to…
What happens to management?
Taylor took work apart into timed tasks in 1911. Are we doing it again?
What happens to leadership?
Who do you lead when some of the team is software, and what does a leader still do?
What happens to careers and HR?
Job titles, pay by the hour, promotion, appraisal: what replaces them?
What happens to education, and the new skills?
If you sell a capability, not a CV, what should schools, universities and training teach?
Part V
Where we might be wrong
Working paper 10: Where we might be wrong
Coordination costs, unwritten know-how, lost apprenticeships, and what would prove us wrong.
The experiment · coming soon
A company that runs itself.
We will try to build a company that runs itself, in public, on video: using our own software to find a business opportunity, taking the work apart into capabilities, building its twin, automating what we can, and reporting what failed as well as what worked. Coming soon.