Reshuffle – Why AI is not a tool problem

Thomas Lipp

Mathis Keller

Quo vadis – The Unbundling of Work

What's happening right now is a fundamental transformation of value creation processes, a shift in the architecture that defines how organizations function – how roles are structured, where value is created, who makes decisions.

Sangeet Paul Choudary calls this process unbundling. What this means: The “jobs” we know aren't natural laws. They're designed artifacts – born from the constraints of a particular era. Roles exist because a person needed to bundle certain tasks that made sense together. Added to this reorganization of activities is the difficulty of meaningfully leveraging an organization's (fragmented) existing knowledge as the foundation for AI-driven transformation. If this doesn't happen, there's a risk that new tools will merely become slop generators that complicate rather than improve strategic decisions, or whose output simply isn't “on strategy.”

The Interesting Question

Mathis Keller

„The concept of “reshuffling” asks how roles and individuals' relationships to value creation must change when traditional organizational structures lose their carrying capacity. In short: What breaks under the AI premise?”

What if the old roles simply no longer correspond to how value is created? To make progress here, the concept examines the status quo, asking where AI/LLMs/agentic workflows erode competitive advantages, where automation is possible, and where new opportunity spaces must be seized. Central is the question of what new bottlenecks emerge and what capabilities the team needs to address them.

For example: in the past it used to be difficult to obtain reliable information (visiting libraries, consulting experts, etc.), today the challenge often lies in clear judgment – that is, the ability to filter relevant information from the wealth of available information, to distinguish truth from falsehood, and to separate the important from the unimportant.

Reshuffling doesn't look at the “global” enterprise level, but rather at smaller organizational units – such as a project team or department. Where a digital strategy looks at long-term opportunities, quick wins, and risks along value creation steps and departments, reshuffling examines these areas up close, focusing on people and their roles. Here, we redefine who takes on which tasks in value creation and what else is needed!

From Framework to Workshop

We could have just given a presentation. Rehashed Choudary's theses, shown some slides, answered questions. But that would have reproduced the very problem we wanted to address. Because the biggest challenge in AI transformation isn't lack of information. It's a lack of conscious engagement with the implications. Many leaders have a vague sense that something is changing and feel an urge to do something. What they're missing is a framework to systematically apply this change to their own organization.

And because the gap between this compelling approach and the reality – which we encounter daily “in the field” with team leaders – seemed so glaringly large, we transformed the concept into a workshop: The idea was to translate the unbundling-rebundling framework into a guided experience that teams and leaders can go through themselves. Not as a lecture about AI trends, but as structured work on the organization. Put differently: It's a process of re-institutionalization under changed (technological) conditions.

What is the first step?

By assessing the status quo in relation to the strategic direction, we create connectivity – both economically and socially. You avoid the dysfunction that arises when reality and the desired organizational order increasingly diverge. You avoid individual actors establishing siloed solutions that bypass the overall strategy and remain just a “special case” without achieving broad adoption or the necessary integration. You avoid missing the boat through inaction. Instead, you will learn to take decisions “above the algorithm” and navigate confidently even in a volatile environment.