Out of Office, But Not Out of Questions
I'm taking a break. See you mid-August.
Hello new readers (and long-time troublemakers),
Thank you to the 300+ of you who joined after the Agile 2025 conference. You’re not just subscribers—you’re now part of the resistance. 🦾
Before I vanish for two weeks of sunshine, sleep, and suspiciously offline behavior in Tuscany, let me leave you with this:
AI is making the world increasingly wicked: more ambiguous, more complicated, more volatile, more scalable...
This makes people reach for answers that are clear, simple, and wrong. And some tech leaders are happy to offer such answers.
Meanwhile, Agile has won the first battle. Agility is everywhere! But we haven't yet won the war.
It’s time to prepare for the next stage in the future of work:
The fight for a future of work that’s still worth living in.
That’s how I ended my keynote in Denver. And that’s where we’ll begin when I return from Tuscany (together with a car full of bottles of olive oil and crema al pistacchio).
Expect essays that challenge the tyranny of easy answers. Expect explorations into algorithmic management, agent-powered collaboration, and post-Agile ways of working that actually serve people.
For now, enjoy the quiet. It won’t last.
See you mid-August.
—Jurgen
p.s. Check out some of my earlier posts:
AI Alignment? How About Human Alignment?
What's the point of aligning AI when we still suck at aligning humans? The real-time alignment check is like a test harness for human behavior. No work-in-progress passes without immediate scrutiny.
From Tyranny to Harmony
My Personal Proclamation for Genuine Freedom. With AI Management and Leadership Going in the Wrong Direction, Some of Us Should Be Pushing Back.
Don't Panic!—The AI Job Apocalypse Is Coming (But Humans Will Always Have Work)
Two billion years ago, a new technology emerged that killed almost everything on Earth—and created the conditions for a sprawling new ecosystem of biological innovation.
Is AI Making Us Lazy?—Our Four Cognitive Options
A recent MIT study made waves because it suggested a cognitive decline when students delegated too much of their thinking to AI. Are our cognitive skills doomed? Is AI making us lazy?
Are Large Corporations Too Big to Fail?
Some people are talking about (or perhaps even hoping for) the death of corporations. I may have been one of them. But, do they have a point? Are networked organizations replacing static org structures?