A paradox that frustrates me as an OD practitioner is being pro-worker/workforce. Hiring is better managed as a high risk matter of design. Across the spectrum of core capability roles to commodity/enabling roles, for most organizations applying real OD often necessities downsizing by design. At the same time, the covid-to-now exploitation of workers for optics, dividend protection, and incentive manipulation has been hard to live with. So on one hand there's a real incentive right now to examine purpose, "fitness" of design, and pursue sustainability. On the other hand, the impacts to workers due to questionable AI demands and real design work. It's a hard time to be working in this field, in my opinion.
Arush Sharma
9mo
Zach- maybe the real paradox is that ethical OD sometimes means letting people go sooner, not later — before burnout, before bad fits calcify, before they’re chewed up by a broken system. & You’re right — it’s a tough time to do this work well..
Erik Gibson
8mo
“Nature red in tooth and claw…” on the one hand, and “the farther side of human nature” on the other. Continue to question the assumptions deeply baked into our market economy: The Rational Man acting purely for economic optima; Shareholder value as purpose; Power as a self-justifying force.
Vital Farms•13K followers
9moYou're naming a real contradiction: to be pro-worker in a system that treats design as a tool for reduction, not care. Channeling my Byung-Chul Han philosophy, he would say this is the violence of optimization, where even empathy is co-opted by efficiency. Organizational design today often masks moral decisions as operational ones. AI, fit-for-purpose structures, and workforce rationalization can become polite ways to disappear people. The challenge isn’t just technical, it’s ethical. Can we design with slowness, presence, and a refusal to treat workers as cost centers? Can we name when design becomes domination? It is a hard time to do this work. But that’s what makes it meaningful.