A viral essay by Jaya Gupta of Foundation Capital, The Next Biggest Moat in AI, has caught my attention. it reminds me of the beauty of an evolutionary #teal organisational state.
Jaya’s argument is simple and unsettling: as #AI commoditizes products, workflows, and technical advantage at breathtaking speed, the only durable edge left isn’t technological — it’s the stage of #human #consciousness your organization operates from.
Reading it, I kept thinking of Frederic Laloux’s #ReinventingOrganizations. Most companies today still run as Orange “machines” — predict, control, hit the number. Bolting AI agents onto that machine doesn’t transform it. It just makes a faster machine.
The real invitation Jaya points to is what Laloux calls Teal: the organization as a living organism. And AI, used with care, is the catalyst that finally makes it practical at scale:
Self-management — AI dissolves the bottleneck at the top. Decisions move to where the sensing happens, supported by peers and an advice process rather than a pyramid.
Wholeness — as AI absorbs mechanical drudgery, people are freed to bring their full cognitive, emotional, and intuitive selves to work.
Evolutionary purpose — instead of trying to predict and control the future, AI-augmented teams sense and respond, listening for what the organization wants to become.
This is where AI #literacy meets AI #agency. Literacy is knowing what these tools can do. Agency is choosing what they should do — in service of work, and people, worth growing.
Teal isn’t a destination. It’s permission.
#ArtificialIntelligence #Leadership #FutureOfWork #TealOrganizations #AIagency
