thesis

An institute for the future of work

We take on the biggest problems about work and the worker's place in it, and put that thinking in the hands of every business, so leaders make better decisions for the business and for the people who serve in it.

thesis.

How a thesis is made.

Detailed process

Problem.

Every thesis starts with a problem that leaders are already deciding on instinct: what a manager is for once the workflow is automated, or what a firm owes a worker it never meets. We take the ones with the highest stakes and the thinnest evidence, and we take them one at a time.

Fig. 1A single problem, chosen for its complexity and its relevance.

Convene.

A curated working session with the smartest people we can find on the problem: academics, operators and researchers who would not otherwise share a table, arguing from the same evidence, with a researcher present to testify on it. It runs as real work, the kind done inside a single company or in a case room at Harvard Business School, and the room is kept small so the argument stays sharp.

Fig. 3Nine seats, one problem, and the work as it stood when the room broke.

Challenge.

No thesis is published alone. The strongest case against it, written by a fellow who is not its author, sits beside it from the first day, and readers take it up from there: responses, objections, new evidence. When the evidence moves, the thesis moves with it, and the record shows every revision: what stood, what changed, and what lost.

Fig. 5The case against it, and every revision it caused.

Here is one, as it stands this week.

Seven theses are on the shelf. Each is published with its evidence, its confidence, and the case against it. This is the one under review.

Thesis 003/The Management Operating Model

Management Is Becoming an Operating System

Spans and layers were set by the cost of coordination. That cost has collapsed and the structure has not moved. Nobody can say what a manager is for in an automated firm, how many are needed, or what they should be measured on. The system is a management operating model built for the firm as it now runs.

Every company automating a workflow this quarter is making a bet about what its managers are for. Almost none of them have written that bet down. Spans, layers and the authority to change a process were all set by the cost of coordination, and that cost has collapsed. Until someone answers what the management layer is for now, the answer is whatever last year's org chart happens to say.

The management layer was never a system. Spans and layers follow trust, tenure and politics, and coordination cost only ever described them after the fact.

Erin EatoughSenior fellow, and not the author of this thesis

Read the thesis Read the case against it

Or just read the work.

One argument a week, every revision as it happens, and the questions we have not answered yet. Free to read, open to challenge.

thesis

How a thesis is made.

Problem.

Research.

Convene.

Distillation.

Challenge.

Publish.

Here is one, as it stands this week.

Management Is Becoming an Operating System

Management Is Becoming an Operating System

Get involved.

Bring a problem

Argue with us

Take a seat in the room

Or just read the work.