I have a sister and a daughter who work in the film industry. What’s happening there should terrify every organization leader.
Productions that currently take 1,000 to 2,000 people to complete are shrinking dramatically. Not by 10%. Not by 20%. The scale of reduction is orders of magnitude larger.
This is happening right now. These are very early days for AI, and the disruption is already visible.
My thesis, which I’ve shared at every LeSS conference keynote since 2020: by October 2027—maybe within two years—we’ll see news of the first job category meaningfully replaced by AI.
I know this sounds like crying wolf. I understand the skepticism. But the boiling frog dynamic is already underway, and it will intensify over the next decade.
Here’s why this matters: these AI systems will be cheap as dirt. They work 24-7. They don’t ask for a vacation. They don’t ask for time off. The labor economics incentives to replace humans will be compelling. Not because companies are cruel, but because the math becomes irresistible.
We humans won’t compete if our only pitch is “please hire me, I’ll make you 10% better.” That won’t cut it anymore.
Jerry Weinberg wrote in Secrets of Consulting that you should never recommend more than a 10% improvement in business. There’s a whole bunch of interesting reasons for that advice.
But at this milestone we’re approaching—this disruption in intelligence-as-a-service—we need to suggest something more ambitious.
Ten times more ambitious.
One of the LeSS guides is “more outcomes, less outputs.” We focus on business impact, not just on producing more stuff. The 10x org takes that principle to its logical extreme: ten times the business impact, ten times the market share, ten times the revenue.
Before AI, that suggestion would have been ludicrous. Now I think it’s the survival strategy.
The core insight comes from org topologies. Think of it as a two-by-two matrix. When both the scope of skills mandate and the scope of work mandate are high, you land in the adaptive quadrant.
That’s always been the LeSS message. But we’re expanding it to a far broader audience—to all the markets that AI will disrupt. Moving to the adaptive quadrant is the fighting chance for our children and grandchildren to have good jobs.
The adaptive quadrant is where humans can deliver impact that no AI can match by following narrow scripts. It’s where people with broad skills and broad mandates can respond, adapt, and create value that multiplies rather than increments.
Hi, my name is Craig, and I’m trying to create good jobs for our children. That’s my professional mission for perhaps the next 10 or 20 years.
I have grandchildren now. Those of you who’ve been at previous conferences with me understand my motivation.
The adaptive organization isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s the perfection vision of where LeSS gets to. And it’s how humans stay relevant in the labor market that’s coming.
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