The Constant Gardener
Dan Shipper on how AI is changing knowledge work:
Knowledge work now is turning into something like gardening, where when you're gardening, you're creating the conditions for the growth to happen but you're not like making the plant with your hands.
It's exactly the right way to think about the shift. It reminds me of how General Stanley McChrystal framed the new rules of engagement in an increasingly complex world in Team of Teams:
Years later as Task Force commander, I began to view effective leadership in the new environment as more akin to gardening than chess. The move-by-move control that seemed natural to military operations proved less effective than nurturing the organization — its structure, processes, and culture—to enable the subordinate components to function with “smart autonomy.”It wasn’t total autonomy, because the efforts of every part of the team were tightly linked to a common concept for the fight, but it allowed those forces to be enabled with a constant flow of “shared consciousness” from across the force, and it freed them to execute actions in pursuit of the overall strategy as best they saw fit.
Within our Task Force, as in a garden, the outcome was less dependent on the initial planting than on consistent maintenance. Watering, weeding, and protecting plants from rabbits and disease are essential for success. The gardener cannot actually “grow” tomatoes, squash, or beans — she can only foster an environment in which the plants do so.
A common concept. A constant flow of “shared consciousness”. Empowered execution in pursuit of an understood strategy. The acceptance that your role is not to create the thing, but to create the conditions in which the thing can emerge.
That same distinction sits behind Alison Gopnik’s work on child development in The Gardener and the Carpenter. From an interview in The Atlantic with Katherine Reynolds Lewis:
If you’re a gardener like me, what you do is try to create an ecosystem where many, many different plants can thrive and create a system that’s resilient enough that when things change, the garden can adjust in very unpredictable ways.
Nurture an ecosystem where things can flourish. Accept that the best outcomes cannot be controlled or even predicted. Build resilience into the foundation of the system.
The work is no longer command, control, create.
It is creating the conditions, curating context and caring deeply about the outcomes.