The Workforce Lens

The Workforce Lens I dig into the future of work — DEI, AI, workforce trends — and share insights HR leaders actually need, minus the corporate fluff.

Do not make endurance the business modelSome managers appear to thrive in player-coach roles because they are carrying a...
04/09/2026

Do not make endurance the business model

Some managers appear to thrive in player-coach roles because they are carrying an unreasonable load with remarkable discipline.

That can conceal the design problem.

The work gets done. The meetings happen. The team receives enough attention to avoid an obvious breakdown. Meanwhile, the manager’s own recovery time, thinking time, and capacity for difficult conversations disappear.

A role should not be judged sustainable simply because a strong person has managed to survive it.

The better test is whether the arrangement leaves enough room for quality technical work and quality management without requiring constant personal sacrifice.

https://zurl.co/WJHMe

Why dual career ladders, ownership roles, and player coach managers work in theory

The label often arrives before the fixA company announces a dual career ladder. A team introduces DRIs. A manager is ask...
31/08/2026

The label often arrives before the fix

A company announces a dual career ladder. A team introduces DRIs. A manager is asked to become a player-coach.

The announcement creates a sense of movement. People have a name for the new arrangement and a diagram to share.

The harder part begins after that. Specialists want to know whether progression and pay are genuinely comparable. DRIs need to know what they can decide. Player-coaches need to know which work is coming off their plate.

Those questions determine whether the change reaches daily life. Without answers, the role may be easy to describe and difficult to perform.

The new article looks at those gaps, using research on pay, delegation, hierarchy, span of control, and manager workload.

https://zurl.co/PR2yv

Why dual career ladders, ownership roles, and player coach managers work in theory

A flatter chart can create a different workforceWhen a company removes layers, the official reason is usually speed. App...
28/08/2026

A flatter chart can create a different workforce

When a company removes layers, the official reason is usually speed. Approvals should be quicker. Decisions should sit closer to the work. Senior leaders should have fewer steps between them and the people doing the job.

Those gains may be real. The change also alters the daily experience of employment.
People who are comfortable with ambiguity may stay. People who relied on a layer for coaching, context, or protection may decide that the new arrangement is not workable. Over time, the workforce becomes shaped by those choices.

The chart looks leaner. The population inside it has changed as well.
That deserves attention before “flat” becomes shorthand for “better”.

https://zurl.co/0HkUa

Why dual career ladders, ownership roles, and player coach managers work in theory

The manager who is still expected to be the expertA team lead finishes a technical task late in the evening, then opens ...
24/08/2026

The manager who is still expected to be the expert

A team lead finishes a technical task late in the evening, then opens a list of one-to-ones that did not happen during the day.

Nobody has behaved badly. The team still needs guidance. The technical work still needs doing. The manager was simply given two substantial jobs and told that both were part of the package.

That is why player-coach roles need careful limits. They can work beautifully when the team is small and the manager’s expertise is central to the work. The same arrangement becomes punishing when the team grows and the technical workload stays heavy.
A structure that depends on permanent overextension is not efficient. It is borrowing from the future.

https://zurl.co/UxtwJ

Why dual career ladders, ownership roles, and player coach managers work in theory

Being accountable is not the same as being able to actImagine being named the owner of a licensing obligation while anot...
21/08/2026

Being accountable is not the same as being able to act

Imagine being named the owner of a licensing obligation while another team controls the budget, the timetable, and the final approval.

You are responsible when the work is late. You are not empowered to change the conditions that made it late.

That is the version of the DRI model that causes resentment. The role sounds clear from the outside, yet the person inside it is still waiting for permission, information, or resources.

Real ownership has edges. The person knows what they can decide, what they must escalate, and what support they can expect. Without those edges, accountability becomes exposure.

https://zurl.co/3QFtF

Why dual career ladders, ownership roles, and player coach managers work in theory

When the best specialist is given a management jobA talented engineer gets promoted. The new title looks impressive. The...
17/08/2026

When the best specialist is given a management job

A talented engineer gets promoted. The new title looks impressive. The work changes almost overnight: fewer technical problems, more meetings, more conflict to handle, more responsibility for other people’s output.

The dual career ladder was created to avoid that forced choice. It gives specialists a route through the organisation without requiring them to become managers.
There is a catch. A specialist route only feels like a real alternative when it carries comparable pay, recognition, and room to progress. The article examines research showing why that promise often becomes uneven in practice.

The uncomfortable part is who ends up on each side of the divide.

https://zurl.co/wFsWJ

Why dual career ladders, ownership roles, and player coach managers work in theory

A specialist gets promoted, gets a fancy title, gets told it carries the same weight as a management track. Then someone...
16/08/2026

A specialist gets promoted, gets a fancy title, gets told it carries the same weight as a management track. Then someone checked the pay data across forty-three firms. It did not.

That gap is the subject of my latest piece: three org design models that companies borrow constantly and rarely read the terms on — the individual contributor ladder, the named-owner model popularised by Apple, and the player-coach manager.

👉 What this piece will actually give you:
✅ A way to check whether your own IC track has a real pay penalty attached to it, and how that penalty tends to widen with seniority rather than stay flat
✅ The one condition that determines whether a named-owner model fixes accountability or just hides the same coordination failure behind a title
✅ The exact threshold, from a manager panel of over 16,000 people, where a player-coach role stops being efficient and starts quietly degrading the team underneath it
✅ A way to tell the difference between an org structure that is genuinely working and one that is just correctly named

None of these three structures is a bad idea. Each one is a precise instrument that depends on a single condition most organisations never check before rolling it out company-wide.

Full piece linked below, with the research at the end

https://zurl.co/DkZ1t

This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn

AI and the Future of Leadership: Are We Removing the Rungs to Success?Our article delves into a critical question: if AI...
07/08/2026

AI and the Future of Leadership: Are We Removing the Rungs to Success?

Our article delves into a critical question: if AI is reducing both middle management and entry-level roles, how will future leaders gain the experience and judgement needed to succeed? This isn't just about job displacement; it is about the fundamental pathways to leadership within organisations. It is a challenge that demands our attention now.

https://zurl.co/SH3kP

What a decade of firm-level data reveals about which layer AI is actually dismantling — and why it matters more than the headlines suggest

Agentic AI: A New Era for Workforce Transformation The rise of agentic AI—systems that can plan and execute complex task...
03/08/2026

Agentic AI: A New Era for Workforce Transformation

The rise of agentic AI—systems that can plan and execute complex tasks—is ushering in a new phase of workforce transformation. Our latest piece examines how this technology is expected to impact middle management and even entry-level hiring, creating a potentially different organisational shape than seen with earlier AI. It is a critical development for all businesses.

https://zurl.co/Q5lir

What a decade of firm-level data reveals about which layer AI is actually dismantling — and why it matters more than the headlines suggest

The Surprising Resilience: Why AI Did Not Hit Customer Service First Many expected customer service, HR, and legal roles...
31/07/2026

The Surprising Resilience: Why AI Did Not Hit Customer Service First

Many expected customer service, HR, and legal roles to be AI's first casualties. Yet, our article reveals that data from AI-investing firms shows no systematic decline in demand for these skills. This surprising revelation suggests that AI's impact is far more complex than often portrayed, focusing on specific functions rather than entire departments.

https://zurl.co/BXAPo

What a decade of firm-level data reveals about which layer AI is actually dismantling — and why it matters more than the headlines suggest

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