Content by Phanish Puranam, Asher Lawson, Miguel Sousa Lobo
Leave Intuition to the MachinesIs it time for System 3 thinking by humans?
Tue, 02/06/2024 - 12:02
Just two months after its launch in late 2022, ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly active users. Along with other advanced language models, it quickly began encroaching on territory traditionally exempt from automation, such as tasks requiring…
How to Rapidly Test New Organization DesignsInstead of blindly adopting industry best practice, companies can pilot new organizational designs
Wed, 04/19/2023 - 12:01
It’s no secret that there are no universally applicable organization designs. What works in one context may not work in another because each organization has a different history, culture, and cast of characters. And yet there is a thriving segment…
Why Hierarchies in Organizations Aren’t All BadHierarchical structures can be useful, even for teams that need to be agile
Tue, 02/21/2023 - 12:02
Knowledge-intensive work is quite different from the physical manufacturing work that birthed the corporate hierarchies widely prevalent today. Consider the incompetent Pointy-Haired Boss in the Dilbert comic strip: He can’t lead through wisdom or…
Better Human-AI Collaboration May Depend on Workflow DesignImproving how humans work with algorithms could simply be a matter of redesigning workflow
Thu, 09/01/2022 - 12:02
How should humans collaborate with artificial intelligence? This is a question of increasing urgency as AI becomes pervasive in the workplace. From screening job applications and chatting with customers to assessing investment portfolios, algorithms…
Should Employees Be Allowed to Choose What They Want to Do?The degree of specialization is the deciding factor
Mon, 02/28/2022 - 12:02
As far as workplace trends go, several topics have dominated popular attention and discussion, from workspace design, digitalization, and Agile methodology to the pandemic favorite of remote working. But there’s another important aspect of work that…
How Should Humans Collaborate With AI?Take the Bionic Readiness Survey and help answer that question
Wed, 07/28/2021 - 12:01
As businesses increasingly adopt AI-driven decision making, experts agree that the most interesting questions are not about whether humans can beat machines or vice versa, but how the two forms of intelligence can most fruitfully collaborate—and how…
Organizational Data: The Silver Lining in the Covid-19 CloudRemote working has produced a data boom that could revolutionize organizations—if they know what to do with it
Tue, 12/15/2020 - 12:02
Covid-19 has dealt most businesses a heavy blow, but the pandemic has at least one under-acknowledged upside. By moving organizations from the office into the virtual space, the pandemic has cracked open a treasure trove of data that can be used to…
Where AI Can Help Your Business (and Where It Can’t) Five questions to ask about whether a business problem is ‘AI-solvable’
Wed, 02/12/2020 - 12:02
Machine learning, the latest incarnation of artificial intelligence (AI), works by detecting complex patterns in past data and using them to predict future data. Since almost all business decisions ultimately rely on predictions (about profits,…
When Is Cool Office Design More Than Window Dressing? Without a firm anchor in organizational design, fun, playful embellishments can be unwelcome additions to the workplace
Wed, 09/18/2019 - 12:01
Flying sharks, waterfalls in the lobby, in-house top chefs, and dogs in the workplace. These are just a few tangible examples of experience design reimagining organizations beyond the traditional scope of organization design. Organization design is…
How to Make Corporate Hierarchy More LikableIf you can’t flatten it, then soften it
Wed, 12/20/2017 - 12:03
What would you say about a system that improves performance but is disliked by a significant percentage of those participating in it? Conventional organizational hierarchy may be just such a system. Yet plenty of theorists—including, at times,…