The End of Magical Thinking

For most of my adult life, the people whose work shaped my thinking operated on a particular kind of trust. They trusted that if you created the right conditions, the substance would arrive without anyone specifying how. Different domains, same operational logic. The post-bureaucratic theorists said: break the rigid structures and better ones will emerge. The co-design tradition I came up inside, particularly the UK public sector innovation…

https://theanke.wordpress.com/2026/05/21/the-end-of-magical-thinking/

I spoke at an event for enterprise architects (EA DACH 26) and did not post about it here because nobody in those networks seems to be on any text based social media anymore

More worryingly, I did not ask anyone what hashtag they were using because I just assumed this is how things are now

THIS SUCKS

On Lineage

I learned from the post-bureaucratic conversation. Lee Bryant, Stowe Boyd, Harold Jarche, the Enterprise 2.0 community, the responsive-organisation thinkers. They were right that bureaucracy was the wrong frame. They were right that programmes were inadequate. They were right that the future is networked and adaptive. They underestimated, I think, how much engineering rigour the alternative would require. The bet on emergence.

https://theanke.wordpress.com/2026/05/13/on-lineage/

I have a tool that works – and I need to make more art

This week I finished building the interactive tool that aims to make sense of Collaboration Architecture enough to test it with its target audience. The people who have those problems and are expected to solve them themselves. While being given toolkits (if any) that aim to optimise how they function as individuals. The first test run was four people in the organisation I just left - physically.

https://theanke.wordpress.com/2026/04/09/i-have-a-tool-that-works-and-i-need-to-make-more-art/

Adding AI tools to a dysfunctional structure adds dead weight and speeds up its collapse.

On Monday, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern's Ministerpräsidentin (the head of the federal state where I live) Manuela Schwesig stood at the chamber of commerce annual reception in Schwerin and told the room that AI is the answer to the the lack of qualified personnel in this state. At this reception, Manuela Schwesig announced another €1.5 million for AI applications. Yesterday she posted…

https://theanke.wordpress.com/2026/03/27/adding-ai-tools-to-a-dysfunctional-structure-adds-dead-weight-and-speeds-up-its-collapse/

RE: https://mastodon.xyz/@nextcloud/116284461878299148

The fact that we do not have the language for the work of designing collaboration, starting from user needs, not from tools. #collaborationarchitecture

Power over AI lies with the least experienced

I was going to write nearly 2000 words about this. But I can make it short. After writing about Enterprise and Business Architecture, about the various frameworks that exist for bridging business needs with IT reality, about ITSM, TOGAF, BIZBOK... after getting excited about collaboration being added to capability models, about building one pagers, building and mapping alliances throughout an 11K+ organisation - …

https://theanke.wordpress.com/2026/03/21/power-over-ai-lies-with-the-least-experienced/