Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Bad Government, 1338–1339. Fresco, Sala della Pace.
Conway’s law comes for all.
AI tools are often touted as a productivity must. It's not rare to see the masses of LinkedIn posting statements such as:
“AI makes you work 10x quicker”
Or
“If you aren’t using Claude Code you are falling behind”
The sentiment has bounced around in the echo chamber enough times that for some it feels like an absolute truth. And while the above statements are overexaggerated, it is true that AI tools can act as coefficient to productivity. But it isn't that simple. No amount of AI tools alone can magically improve company productivity. The reason being something known as Conway’s law, it states:
[O]rganizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.
The productivity and the product mimic the overall culture of an organization.
Simply put, if your company culture is bad, your output will be bad. Regardless of your tools, a company is still a collection of human entities working together to produce a commodity. Co-operation will always be a central part of a company, that fact can't be escaped.
It is in our belief that AI has to play a part and will play a part in the future of all white-collar work. It is relevant at varying degrees in different sectors, due to a multitude of factors. But it will play a part, . However, we find the tenacity and rhetoric with which some companies have chosen to pursue AI quite worrisome. This is something that has to be threaded on . AI is a loaded subject so the communication strategy has to be a bit more calculated than siccing your C-suite on the dying carcass of LinkedIn to engage in a screaming competition on who uses the most AI. Such actions are destructive to the company spirit and do more harm than good.
The board and the executive level have a responsibility towards the employees to engage in precise communication on the company's AI strategy. There are a lot of ways to do this, one of which being involving the employees. One way is to work together with experts, employees and the executive forces to craft a way that the employees are expected to use AI.
AI is important and should be used but don’t let it be the thing that ruins your culture and in the end your company.
