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change-management

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In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen 2026-10-21-2

Eric Schmidt: The Age of Agents, Superintelligence, and Why Europe Is Falling Behind

Schmidt says the gains are real but concentrated in software, cyber and math, where learning loops are fast, and biology lags on data. The effect he is most confident about is organizational: a friend's firm cut 20% of staff, the 'glue' planners, and an estimated 2,000 of 10,000 people at a large firm are unneeded. Read against deBoer's cancer example, displacement arrives first where the work is coordination, not where the problem is physical.

Wall Street Journal 2026-04-02-2

How Working in America Became So Joyless

The biggest risk in enterprise AI isn't technical failure: it's deploying into a morale vacuum. Companies are cutting perks, stretching managers to 12 direct reports, and pushing AI adoption simultaneously, creating a workforce too anxious to adopt the tools being deployed. The data point that matters isn't the espresso machine; it's Gallup's 50% jump in manager span-of-control since 2013, which signals organizational thinning has outpaced management design. Winners won't deploy AI fastest; they'll deploy it without destroying the human infrastructure that makes adoption possible.