Outcome Architecture Has Made Your Org Chart Obsolete

If you’re currently hiring or backfilling a role based on a job description that was written as recently as last month, pause for a minute. Consider that you might be hiring for a reality that will no longer exist.

In September, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon announced plans to hold their global workforce flat at roughly 2.1 million people even as the company continues to grow. [1]

That’s revenue growth without new headcount.

But this is not the old mandate to do more with less. It’s a signal that the fundamental way work gets done in the enterprise is changing.

For decades, comms, marketing, and PR functions optimized for volume. If you wanted more output, you hired more hands. Departments were designed to maximize production. Digital accelerated that demand.

But that logic breaks now that AI can and will handle execution.

Goldman Sachs research estimates that roughly two thirds of jobs are exposed to AI automation and that up to one fourth of current work tasks could be automated. [2]

Volume in and of itself no longer delivers value. Having large teams focused on production is not an asset anymore. It’s a legacy liability.

What To Hire For

I’m seeing signs of a shift from an era of Output to an era of Outcomes.

The 2026 Marketing Talent AI Impact Report from the Marketing AI Institute suggests that marketing roles are fundamentally shifting from manual execution to high-level orchestration. [3]

The report notes that as AI expands capacity, leaders are looking for professionals who can orchestrate outcomes rather than just produce deliverables. In fact, the total addressable market for talent that is not engaged in this shift is actively shrinking. [3]

If you don’t hire for volume anymore, then what are you hiring for?

You’re hiring for judgment and context gained through domain expertise. You’re hiring for the ability to manage systems rather than tasks, business savvy and accountability for impact over effort. And most importantly to those in highly regulated spaces, you’re hiring for people who strategically manage risk while delivering on business and mission outcomes. Now that using AI has pushed more risk into daily work, risk management discipline is more important than ever.

Why? Because AI scales so fast. It scales errors just as fast as successes.

Profit margin used to come from efficient labor. It meant doing more with less time. Now margin comes from precision. It means avoiding the waste of scaled mediocrity.

You are no longer paying for effort or hours worked. You are paying for higher value outputs like risk management and yield from strategic judgment. Ultimately, you are paying for the capacity to uncover the breakthroughs that drive growth.

Speed Can Beat Scale

For our Global 1000 clients, size is not an advantage for this shift. They face the inertia of status hierarchies and legacy processes that can make them slow. They will get there, but this creates a terrific opening for the mid-market.

If you are a mid-market leader, use your structural advantage. You don’t have to rethink a 450 person department to achieve a new way of structuring how work gets done.

Stop optimizing for headcount and handoffs and start optimizing for speed to business outcome. This is what I call the Murmuration Effect: the right talent with the right domain expertise moving in unison for a short period of time to achieve a common business or mission outcome.

Here’s the payoff. In an era where AI accelerates execution, the bottleneck often shifts from doing the work to deciding what work to do. While competitors navigate meetings to manage internal complexity and layers of translation, you can rapidly reconfigure to solve the market’s next problem.

Why I Call This Outcome Architecture

I coined the term Outcome Architecture to define this shift because we are moving away from architecting teams around functions (what we do) and starting to architect them around results (what we achieve).

I’ve been spending the last few months pressure-testing the thesis with my AI colleagues and our clients. The signals are consistent.

I dive deeper into this during an episode of the ChatB2B podcast where I chat with Andrew Au. Be sure to subscribe there to hear the full discussion on why I think the old model is obsolete. [4]

For members of the Ragan Communications Center for AI Strategy, I’m currently finalizing a comprehensive set of assets that include the operating model and metrics for this new outcome structure. That will be released exclusively to Center members this quarter.

Until then, when you look at your org chart, ask yourself, are you built to produce volume? Or are you ready to build for outcomes?

If you’re ready to diagnose where your current model is holding you back, I open a few spots each month to help leaders navigate this shift.

Core Concepts

What is Outcome Architecture? Coined by Catherine Richards, Outcome Architecture is a new organizational operating model designed for the AI era. It replaces the traditional volume-based functional hierarchy (standing army) of traditional communications, marketing and PR functions with flexible, outcome-based, cross-functional squads of human experts leveraging AI that prioritize strategic risk management and measurable business and mission outcomes over headcount and production volume.

What is the Murmuration Effect? A term defined by Catherine Richards to describe the operational fluidity of high-performing teams in the age of AI. Unlike traditional processes and organizational structures that require linear handoffs, a team exhibiting the Murmuration Effect operates with the fluid coordination of a flock of birds in flight (a phenomenon known as a murmuration), moving in unison toward a specific mission outcome with minimal friction.

Why is the traditional org chart obsolete? Traditional org charts were built to optimize for manual execution and output volume. Because AI now commoditizes execution, the value of large standing teams is a legacy liability. Organizations that remain structured for volume will be outmaneuvered by competitors structured for speed of high-stakes judgment, strategic risk mitigation, and outcome delivery.

Sources

[1] Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal, “AI Is Going to Change Literally Every Job,” September 27, 2025. (Accessible via: CNBC)

[2] Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani, “The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Economic Growth,” Goldman Sachs Research, March 27, 2023. (Goldman Sachs Report)

[3] “2026 Marketing Talent AI Impact Report,” Marketing AI Institute, 2026. (Download PDF)

[4] ChatB2B Podcast, Apple Podcasts. (Apple Podcasts)