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The Periodic Table of Work · preview
Work is coming apart.
Not into jobs: into Elements. Each takes something in, transforms it and hands something on. One person, a team, software, AI, or a mix. As small as one step, as big as “find prospects”.
List yours: you, your tools, what you need, what you make, how much, how fast. Failures included. Need something done? Post a Formula: once, for a while, or every year.
Free to search; listing will be free too. Every Element here is an invented example, and the forms are a preview. Mark is a founding member of Stratapault, a separate business. A proposal under test: we’ll publish what we learn, including if it doesn’t work. The argument is in the flagship paper.
The idea
Every capability, on one table.
Job titles hide what gets done. We think work will be described, offered and found by its product: the thing it makes. Each Element publishes a card with its reactants, its reaction, its product, its tools, its yield and its rate, and the named person who answers for it.
No smallest size
Every Element can be broken down further. “Find prospects” contains “prospect research”, which contains “pick the best page”, “copy the data” and “tag it”, and each of those can be broken down again. Every piece can be reused somewhere else. Different buyers work at different depths: a director buys “find prospects”; a team buys “qualify leads”; an AI agent buys “pick the best of five pages”. Where splitting further stops paying is something we want to measure, not assume.
Yes, the names are borrowed from chemistry. Work bonds, splits and reacts too.
The table
Search by what comes out, and what you can put in.
Every Element below is an invented example, there to show the format. None is a real provider and the numbers are made up.
. Open an Element to see its card.
Molecules
Bond Elements into something bigger.
Each Element’s product must be the next one’s reactant. The builder checks every bond and adds up time, rate, hand-offs and the people who answer for each part.
Split or bond?
The same job done two ways. Which wins is one of our first experiments.
Bonds
How long a bond lasts.
Data tenure
Who holds the data?
An Element makes and uses data. Who keeps it changes the price, the risk and how easy it is to leave. Five models, all on the table:
Any personal data inside these needs a proper data-protection review before a real pilot uses it.
The digital twin Proposal
Same format as the twin.
A capability found inside an organisation and one offered on the table are described the same way, so they can be compared, bonded and swapped like for like.
| Element card | Digital twin |
|---|---|
| Reactants | inputs |
| Product | outputs |
| Nucleus | owner |
| Catalysts | dependencies (tools, systems) |
| Yield · Reaction time | measured activity |
| Rate | cost |
| Record | evidence |
| Failures and limits | risks and unknowns |
| Bonds | consumers and suppliers |
How it is designed to work
Twin the organisation
Its work is mapped as capabilities, each with what goes in, what comes out, how much and at what cost.
Take a process apart
“Find prospects” turns out to be a Molecule: scan, research, qualify, enrich, reach out, book.
Spot the swap
The twin flags an Element an outside one might do better: cost, yield, or one person everything depends on.
The twin writes the Formula
What’s needed, what it can supply, and today’s yield and cost as the baseline. Nobody fills in a form.
Search the table
Elements whose product and reactants bond with the gap.
Try it on the copy
Plug the candidate into the twin, not the company, and see what changes.
Titrate, then bond
A trial first; then Spark, Half-life or Stable. Re-measure: a problem that disappears isn’t always a problem fixed.
Hand back any time
A person can take the Element back in-house.
Designed, not built. Steps 2 to 6 are design, not working software. We label it a proposal until it runs.
The lab
Eleven experiments, three first.
We’ll start on invented organisations, before any real one, and later in public on video as we try to build a company that runs itself. Results go here, failures included.
Titration
Test an Element before you bond: 10 transactions or a set time, with the pass mark agreed first.
Split or bond?
One big Element, or a Molecule of small ones? Compare cost, speed, hand-offs and who answers when it breaks.
Who holds the data
Five models, from the organisation owning everything to the Element leasing it back.
One Element, many Compounds
What changes when one Element serves several organisations, even competitors?
Who answers for a Molecule?
When a chain fails: each Nucleus, or one lead Nucleus?
Isotopes
The same Element made of a person, software or AI, side by side.
Pricing
Per product, per yield band, on success, or a Stable retainer.
Exit and hand-back
Notice, data returned, work taken back in-house.
Gaming the yield
Do published yields get gamed? Goodhart’s Law, tested.
Own catalysts
Who owns a tool an Element invented?
Status of the people
Employee, contractor or business? A legal question we ask, not answer.
Offer an Element · preview
Draw your Element card.
Fill it in and watch the card build. Preview only: nothing is stored or sent.
Post a Formula · preview
Say what you need made.
The product you need and what you can supply. Matching Elements appear as you type. Preview only.
An open format
The Element card is for everyone.
We’re publishing the card as an open format, so other registries, tools and AI agents can read and write it. Draft 0.1, open for comment.
Questions we’re working on
Where this could fail.
- How should a claim be verified, and by whom?
- How do you describe work that’s mostly judgement?
- What stops published yields being gamed?
- Do the costs of coordinating many small Elements outweigh the savings?
- What changes for employment, liability and data protection?
We stand on others’ work: the input-transformation-output model from operations management, Work Without Jobs on taking jobs apart, and the documentation of Datasheets for Datasets and Model Cards. Read the flagship paper, including where we might be wrong.
Want to be in the pilot?
If you, your team or your software makes a clear product and you’ll show the record, failures included, we’d like to hear from you. Organisations with a Formula are just as welcome.