Why the newsletter?
The way we’re working isn’t working. I’ve spent a few years and a stack of essays making that case. Eventually the arguments got concrete enough that I started a company to act on that basis.
I began writing Complexity Matters in the fall of 2022. Season one made the argument that most organizations developed learning disabilities. They’re badly adapted to an information age that keeps accelerating, and the fundamentals of how we actually build organizations never caught up. I dug into what’s missing, and how complexity theory and systems thinking can update a mental model that mostly dates from the last century.
Season two got practical: how organizations improve their operating models and make better decisions.
Along the way, LLM’s and AI emerged. These revolutions primed organizations to start inspecting their operating models. In order to do this at scale, I launched a business. It’s now Machinegeist, the consultancy I’m building with Laurens Van Acker, where we make founder- or family-led companies AI-native. We don’t just write about operating models, we build the actual systems.
The newsletter is turning into an experiment where we think and build out loud. Ideas get tested here first; the ones that survive contact with reality end up in the work.
I spent my career in technology leadership, working with more companies than I can keep straight on their roadmaps and their reorganizations. The pattern I kept seeing: everyone copies the visible behavior of whoever’s winning, and almost no one digs for the principle underneath. I write for the people who’d rather have the principle.
If you want this built into your own company, that’s what Machinegeist is for. If you’d rather poke holes in the thinking first, that’s what the comments are for.
Where to find me
Here’s where I hang out online, and where you can reach me if you want to collaborate, talk systems, or exchange gardening tips.
Follow me on X (formerly Twitter)
Au bout de la France (our homestead project in rural France)
