Michael Lissack
(research programs pay good money for transcriptions, as do medical hospitals for recorded doctors’ rounds), nor as someone who performs a myriad of other functions. This functional separation becomes even more relevant in today’s AI-augmented workplace. The administrative professional of today might work with generative AI tools to draft communications, research industry trends, organize virtual meetings across time zones, and visualize complex data—functions that were previously distributed across multiple special- ized roles. The question isn’t whether AI will replace this role but how the functionality can be recombined to create higher-value contributions. Do you hope that your assistant does not start thinking of themselves as capable of doing these things? Would you prefer to think that they are an “assistant” and not a person with a bundled set of process skills? Would you prefer your assistant not to know that the processes may each have a greater value than the complete package? Sorry to be discomforting (especially if you have a talented and underpaid assistant). Functionality is often hidden and not seen, yet recognizing it as separate and distinct liberates both the item which is engaged in the process and the process itself so that they can be recombined in new ways to achieve greater value. This recognition of separable functionality now extends to the high- est levels of organizational design. Companies increasingly structure themselves around modular capabilities that can be reconfigured as mar- kets evolve. Amazon’s organization into hundreds of small, independent teams—each responsible for specific functionality that can be accessed through standardized interfaces—epitomizes this approach. The company can rapidly recombine these functional components to enter new markets or create new offerings without rebuilding capabilities from scratch. Similarly, platform businesses like Shopify have separated core e-commerce functionality into components that merchants can assemble to create customized experiences. Payment processing, inventory man- agement, customer communication, and logistics—previously bundled into monolithic retail operations—now exist as distinct functional mod- ules that can be combined in countless ways.
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