If you’re a business leader, founder, coach, or facilitator who’s tired of the old game and ready to co-create the next evolution of organisations then this piece is for you.

I made it as short as possible, but not shorter...there is no simple solution, no easy way out.

The real problem of humanity: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”

— E.O. Wilson, 1998

Wilson saw this coming decades ago. In terms of godlike tech, we didn't even have iPhones, Social Media, Bitcoin and Chat GPT in 1998! Every crisis we are experiencing right now is stacked, cascading into and compounding each other leading to a breakdown of our institutions. Welcome to our BANI World which is replacing the good old VUCA World. Gosh, VUCA was comfy compared to...

So what can we do? AI, robotics, synthetic biology, and blockchain are not going away. We’re not going to regulate them out of existence, no matter how many Frankenstein policies and regulations we try to bolt together. Hello EU?! The genie is out of the bottle. Instead of fighting the inevitable, what if we focused on what we can actually change: ourselves, our mindsets, our patterns, our organisations, and how we respond?

AI is automating 50% of white-collar jobs by 2030 (Goldman Sachs, McKinsey). Middle managers, analysts, HR teams, nobody’s safe. This is the inside-out revolution: (big) tech selling more software to existing clients, hollowing out the workforce. Your org chart is on borrowed time. But power structures remain intact.

But AI won’t finish the job. Based on what I am sensing it's gonna be blockchain that will attack the DNA of organisations.

• Managers? Smart contracts will do the vast majority of alignment and coordination.

• Hierarchies? DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations) will flatten them. No more need to talk to my boss first.

• Payments? Automated, onchain, no more Friday afternoon dramas.

Blockchain is the outside-in revolution that most managers cannot see because your headquarters are already behind the adoption curve. Rebels and mavericks are rebuilding the system from scratch. 40% of corporate intermediaries might on the chopping block (WEF). Decentralised networks will be eating the world, and most leaders are still stuck in last year’s PowerPoint. The crypto revolution seems to be happening somewhere else...

AI and blockchain are unstoppable. We’re not getting the genie back in the bottle.
The first thing this tech does is trigger our Paleolithic emotions: fight, flight, or freeze. That fear response cascades into organisations, into these medieval institutions whether they’re private, public, or nonprofit. Even top managers are just humans, like you and me. Their fear systems get triggered, too. Damn it.

If you’re a regulator or civil servant, you reach for the rulebook. If you’re in the C-suite, you believe only you have the foresight to grasp the scale of what’s coming.

But the old playbook comprising redundancies, delayering, restructuring won’t save you.
You can’t change your organisation, let alone the system, with another wave of layoffs.

Doom and gloom? Not in the slightest!

I’m a bridge builder and a systemic thinker born via an emergency C-Section in a modern hospital. Unintended consequences? Sure, we now know...yet I'd rather be alive with those conditions than a doomer back in the 1970s saying we must stop this, it can lead to dangerous side effects later on in life.

Yes, yes, yes, we heard the AI doomers for years. And? We didn't stop Elon or Sam, did we? Could we have? Should we have? If you consider yourself part of the 9% who is neither filthy rich nor living a life on TOIL as a (digital) serf, then surely you could have. But something more powerful seems to be at play, like dark matter in the universe: invisible yet palpable.

When it comes to Ai and crypto, another quote comes to mind:

Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come" - Victor Hugo.

Don't fight, don't resist, let go of your need for control. It's your fear system speaking. Change perspectives:

When the tech tsunami hits, your first reaction is limbic: fight, flight, or freeze.
You can’t “strategy” your way out of a trauma response.
You need inner work — reflection, dialogue, walk in the woods or a session with psychedelics — to see what’s really going on.

We don't need another McKinsey deck, but a willingness to see that you can’t patch up the old.
You have to imagine the new. This is organisational development with a distinct outside-in perspective. I haven't got any more answers than you have, but I have a big, hairy, audacious idea, for audacious leaders inside organisations as much as for my practitioner peers in various disciplines.

There is a place between complacency and crisis, I'll meet you there. — free after Rumi

Imagine you are a manager in an organisation: the workforce culling by AI you will soon be asked to manage will make all restructuring, delayering, and redundancies in your entire career (no matter how long) a footnote. That's the scale of what's coming, if you want to stay in auto-pilot, keep cashing in your pay check, bonus and LTIP shares, then look at the left side of the box below.

If you consider yourself an innovator, disruptor, focus your eyes on the right side of the box below.

Redundancy is a machine word but humans are not machines. When you make someone redundant, you’re saying they’re no longer needed in the machine. But as long as a human lives, they are relevant to the planetary system, to society, to the future.

You might be redundant in this late-stage capitalist, neoliberal economic world order where AI is automating half the jobs. But you will never be irrelevant.

Outplacement is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. Got another job at another company, perhaps in an industry a bit less aggressive on AI automation? Brilliant, congratulations! You bought 3 years of time.

Creating meaningful alternatives for people to earn a living beyond the dependency on an employer's pay check might be The Meta-Opportunity amidst the Metacrisis. Across all hierarchical levels.

With the emergence of vibe coding now most people currently in employment could build an app, an asset, some defendable IP around a valuable customer process - and earn from that while they sleep. Believe me, finding that thing keeps me awake at night. Will keep you posted once I do.

OpportunityLift is a more life-affirming alternative compared to Outplacement, right? I came up with it on a walk in the woods. It's a wooden working title. Find me a better name please!

For Companies:

• Commit Irrevocably: Put budgets into Bitcoin/Ethereum treasuries an lock them in smart contracts. No more “we changed our mind” after the press release.

• Self-Organised Platform: Employees pitch via Shark Tank-style processes.

• Build Owners:

  • Dragons Den-like voting: Community-funded micro-grants

  • Micropreneur pairs: Business and coder teams build onchain apps, processes, DAOs

  • Profit over vanity metrics: Forget scale for scale’s sake. Sustainability is about owning your cash flow.

For Employees:

• Escape dependency. Own your work

• Compete with (not for) your ex-employer

• Live on 70%: Reduce expenses, build anti-fragile savings, and reclaim your remaining life time.

We’ve seen this elements of this in the wild before:

• Haier’s platform-ecosystem: 4,000+ micropreneur teams, $30B revenue.

• DAOs: 10,000+ decentralised orgs, $200B+ assets under management.

• ...check Reinventing Organisations or Corporate Rebels for plenty more examples

OpportunityLift could become an adaptation of organisational life forms especially the C-Corp type.

Surely there is more but these are top of my mind right now:

• Inner work: heal your trauma that comes with being part of a cult called Late-Stage Capitalism

• Consciousness-Based Leadership: Radical honesty, no sugar-coating

• Ecosystem Sprints: 90-day launches, not endless transformation programs

• Blockchain Tools: DAOs, smart contracts, transparency by design

• Tribe-Filtering: For the 9% who’d rather risk their pension than their self-sovereignty (more below)

The 1% doesn't have debt problems, they use this leverage for maximising wealth, actually. They, and corporations in general, can also use complicated off-shoring vehicles to not pay the tax they should. For most of us mere mortals debt is typically a toxic vicious circle.

In my own experience, freedom from the shackles of employment on leverage came when I learned to consistently live 30% under my means and get rid of my debt (still some...). It's so dead simple and we heard it all before: safe to invest so you can earn passive income.

For a few years now, I have the freedom and autonomy to (sometimes more, sometimes less) design my own day according to my own definition of a life well lived. In that department, the sample size is N = 1.

I know what's best for me. And so do you, for you. Stop keeping up with the Jones's!

I’m not part of the 1%. And if I look at the vast majority of the 99%, I don’t fit there either.
The 9% is a mindset, a tribe, a layer in society that sits between the two.
You have the choice right now to serve the 90%, not the 1%.
That’s the audacious spiral. That’s the shift.

You’re being asked to manage the unmanageable: layoffs today, your own redundancy tomorrow.
This isn’t your fault, but it is your choice.

I know I know it's another false duality and your truth will lie somewhere in the middle, but for the sake of concluding this, which path are you going to choose?

• Take the slide: Optimise the old, race to the bottom.

• Take the spiral: Build an OpportunityLift platform for yourself and others

Creating an OpportunityLift (instead of becoming complicit in the biggest Outplacement wave of all times) is your chance to model the mindset shift: from dependency to ownership, from extracting to regenerating.

Yes, it’s risky. Yes, you might have to cut your lifestyle costs to afford to think bigger. But if you want legacy, not just a pension, you’ll need to get audacious.

If you’re feeling anxious or stuck, you’re not alone. This isn’t about blame it’s about recognising our shared humanity and choosing a new response, together.

I’ve walked this path myself from corporate man to psychedelic coach and blockchain bridge builder. The shift isn’t easy, but for me, it’s non-negotiable.

My Now What? call to action today are two questions that guide me everyday:

Ok, this was the main text, think of it like a wake-up call, manifesto even. It's a v1 and I want critical discourse! So that we can co-create V2 next. Please comment below.

Blockchain for Beginners by Marcus Druen: Change Maker & Blockchain Early Adopter and My Onchain Persona on Maven

Onchain is the new Online. Ready to lead while others lag? Blockchain will shape your future - don't be left behind.

https://maven.com

The below is a further deep dive into the data, models, assumptions, hypotheses and observations behind the above article.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
Together with my long-term business partner and friend, Christian Erhard and Honest Elephant, we run a little Transformation Partnering Practice called audacify (website re-launch soon).

Yes, we are two white men...and yet we complement each other in ways most diversity departments don't pay attention to. Ask me anything.

The two of us thrive on being challenged and supported by our tribe of mentors. I have called together The Mentors of audacify in writing not just this article, but for what we want to bring into the business world at large. They are truly a diverse bunch, mostly from outside the business bubble and consulting echo chambers. That’s no accident; we’re not here to optimise the old. Some I know personally, most I don’t, but all of them shape how I construct my reality and see the future.

AI Job Displacement:

• Goldman Sachs: 300M jobs at risk

• McKinsey: 30% automation by 2030

• WEF: 40% workforce reduction plans

• Bloomberg: 200,000 banking jobs

Blockchain & Ownership Economy:

• WEF: Blockchain replaces 40% of intermediaries

• Bitcoin: Fifth-largest asset

• Ethereum: World computer

Ecological & Social Breakdown:

• IPCC: Climate risks

• Gallup: 70% employee disengagement

• CDC: Loneliness epidemic

• Self-Selection Portal:
  This isn’t another HR-mandated “redeployment” scheme. People opt in because they want to, not because they’re told to. The portal is open to anyone in the organisation who senses they’re at risk of redundancy nor or in future, or simply wants to try something new in their career. You don’t need to wait for a pink slip. You pitch your idea, maybe it’s an app, a new process, or a micro-business. You can go solo, but in my experience, the real magic happens when you pair up: business mind meets coder, or product person meets sales hustler. This is about building new value, not just moving boxes on an org chart.

  Dragons Den-like Process:
  Forget the old “innovation theatre.” Here, ideas are vetted by the community, not just the C-suite. Think of it as an internal Dragons Den: you pitch, your peers vote, and the best ideas get micro-grants. But the money isn’t handed out by a committee, it’s released automatically via smart contracts. No more waiting for someone in finance to sign off. If your idea gets the votes, you get the funds. Full transparency, no politics.

  Ownership Rails:
  This is where blockchain earns its keep. Every new project or micro-business gets its own onchain structure; think equity tokens, onchain payroll, and even DAOs for collective decision-making. You’re not just building a product; you’re building ownership. If you create an app or a process that takes off, you actually own a piece of it. No more “thanks for your service, here’s a mug.” This is real, digital ownership of IP, verifiable, transferable, and, crucially, not dependent on your old employer’s goodwill.

  Bitcoin/Ethereum Treasury:
  Companies put their money where their mouth is. Instead of a traditional outplacement budget, they would lock funds into a Bitcoin or Ethereum treasury for at least 12 months. This isn’t just a gesture it’s a signal to everyone (including third parties and potential partners) that the resources are truly available and can’t be clawed back when the next CFO changes their mind. It’s trust-minimised, auditable, and sets the tone for a new kind of organisational commitment.

  Metrics:
  We don’t just count cost savings. We track what actually matters:

  • How many micropreneurs launched?

• Consultants optimise the old.

• audacify midwifes the new.

• We role-model the future: Our team is a network of micropreneurs.

• We overtly advise against the McKinseys of this world as a firms because they are part of the problem and show now/too little signs of being part of a possible solution

• We are open to collaborate with mission-aligned alumni.

1. Phase 1: CEO/Board commits to Crypto treasury + smart contracts.

2. Phase 2: Employees pitch, pair, and build via Shark Tank-style voting.

3. Phase 3: DAOs replace departments; employees come off balance sheets

4. Phase 4: Continuous learning, feedback, and ecosystem expansion; employer shrinks to optimal size in niche, micropreneurs own their own cash flow and thrive