Music as a blueprint

Americans live in an age of mass production for the many. The organizations that make things en masse have to work with dozens, hundreds, or thousands of humans to create value. The question has long been: how do we get everybody to work together so the product at the register is the same for customer #1 as customer #25,5847?

"Management" was the approach de jour to deliver consistent products to their customers. Success is codified with how to do it and what to measure to determine if it was successful. The organization rallies around SOPs designed to predictably deliver the end result. Deviation from SOPs is "death," so new functions are created to monitor and measure if the team is following the SOPs. Entire careers could be spent ensuring somebody else was following directions.

This is great for mass-made immutable processes where the end product is one-size-fits-some, covers most, and leaves the rest naked. With AI, we don't have to settle for this anymore.

Now everything can be customized and contextualized for each individual that interacts with it. Every journey, every interaction can be tailor made from the ground up for each person in any moment of time. Customer A and Customer B will have different instances of the same product. And Customer A on Monday will have a different instance than on Tuesday when they can't be online because they take care of the kids that day.

Each customer in their different states will realize more value from a dynamic product than the mass-made one.

The AI agents that enable this don't need to be - and maybe don't want to be? - managed. They don't need to follow an SOP because an SOP doesn't make sense at the customer N=1 level.

And the humans working with the agents probably don't want to be - or need to be - managed like humans of 2019.

The era of management and the manger are over.

Instead, we should look to more soulful, creative, inspiring ways that groups of actors, well, act together to create something of value.

Music seems a good place to start:

• It's an ephemeral experience for the creators and the recipients
• It wrangles time into something "tangible" for a brief moment
• Musicians are T-shaped - you need to master an instrument, but also be versed in rhythm, groove, collaboration, musical literacy, etc.
• Music is made by the brain for the brain, and each of our brains has a unique playlist that shifts over time

Where there used to be managers, controllers, directors, and division, maybe now there will be orchestrators, composers, choreographers, and ensembles.

It's time to trade in the management books and go get in an education in how to make music.