"We all know the line usually (and wrongly) pinned on Einstein that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. But here's the thing few people in business truly understand when it comes to the products and services they deliver: "The enemy of delivering quality is doing different things yet expecting the same result.""
"Some have identified this current period in business as the Great Flattening, where AI puts vast reservoirs of knowledge at everyone's fingertips in just milliseconds, making many middle managers and other knowledge workers obsolete. Gartner found that through 2026, 20% of the organizations they surveyed will use AI to flatten their organizational structure, eliminating over half of their current middle management positions. I expect this to only grow-and accelerate-in the coming years."
"The new differentiator is whether you can turn your knowledge into utility-the ability to do things that need to be done. It's through utility that you create value by transforming the what into the how and why of systems, and execution that produce quality on demand, without drama. Value will be created in the new economy not by knowing the answer, but by knowing the question. Utility is the ability to execute, to know the problem, to have the question."
Improvement requires change while quality requires consistency. Leaders must intentionally choose when to change and when to sustain processes, building the capability to do both. AI is rapidly democratizing knowledge, prompting organizational flattening and making knowledge alone insufficient as a differentiator. Middle managers who rely on superior knowledge risk obsolescence as information becomes table stakes. Value will come from converting knowledge into utility: the ability to identify problems, ask the right questions, and execute systems and processes that produce consistent quality on demand. Utility emphasizes practical execution and system design rather than merely possessing answers.
Read at Fortune
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