There’s no shortage of ideas about how to redesign work right now.

In architecture, before you touch the floor plan, you establish a concept. A single organizing idea that every subsequent decision answers to. Call it the parti if you want to be precise about it, the irreducible core of what you’re trying to create. If the concept is sound, it works at every scale. It holds up in the lobby and on the top floor. If it doesn’t hold up everywhere, it wasn’t really the concept.

The same logic applies to redesigning work.

If your concept is enabling human potential, that idea should be as visible in how you onboard a new hire as it is in how your senior leadership makes decisions. It should work at the top of the organization and at the bottom. If it only works in the mission statement, it’s decoration, not design.

Most redesigns of work never get to this question. They start with the structure and hope the concept emerges.

Maybe the harder question underneath all of it: what does work organized around human potential actually look like when you remove the industrial logic entirely? Not modify it. Remove it.

That’s probably the right place to start.