Individuals and small teams can now generate decisions, options, and initiatives faster than existing organizations were designed to legitimize, coordinate, or absorb. The bottleneck has shifted from execution to governance.
When surplus productive capacity accumulates without an absorption layer, organizations don’t gradually adapt. Historically, they freeze: tighter rules, centralization, bans, decoupling.
We saw a similar reflex during COVID: when systems couldn’t absorb shock locally, they shut down globally.
What seems under-discussed is absorption: not "how fast can we produce" but how many decisions, options, and changes an organization can metabolize without defensive closure.
Two mechanisms seem relevant but under-theorized: (1) small, local process changes that redistribute coordination and decision load; (2) continuous skill and role shifts, as people reposition around what still needs to be decided, maintained, and legitimized.
I’ve been trying to think about this as a kind of "conduction" problem, how human decision-making and legitimacy flow alongside generations, AI and people.
If you’ve seen organizations handle this well (or fail badly), I’d be curious: what actually lets systems absorb AI-driven over-efficiency without reverting to control, ranking, layoffs or shutdown?