# From Auto-Pilot to Audacious Spiral

> For the 9% ready to serve the 90% — not the 1%

**Published by:** [Marcus Druen aka antaur.eth : Personal Dispatch](https://paragraph.com/@antaur/)
**Published on:** 2025-06-03
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@antaur/from-auto-pilot-to-audacious-spiral

## Content

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, 1998We’re living Wilson’s Warning...All at OnceWilson 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... B : Brittle A : Anxious N : Non-linear I : IncomprehensibleLet life happens through you not to youSo 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?The Elephant in the Room: AI’s White-Collar Extinction EventAI 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.The Invisible Avalanche: Blockchain’s Trust Revolution Blockchain doesn’t just automate the system. It strips out fragile trust assumptions and replaces it with code. It creates a new system that makes the old obsolete. 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... Together, AI x Crypto will spell the End of Management as we Know It.The future will not be managed...it will be owned.Why these 3 threats are hitting All at Once & why they have a hierarchyAI 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. We'll get more top-down, centralised control, more regulation. 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!Why I’m Still a Techno-Optimist 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: Tech = unstoppable! Let’s get great at steering not fighting it.Why Inner Work is the Real DealWhen 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. Real foresight based on hard-earned wisdom comes from this inner work, that some people still consider touchy-feely. Really?? It's 2025 and you are out of touch mate! 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.The Big Idea: let's create an Audacious SpiralThere is a place between complacency and crisis, I'll meet you there. — free after RumiImagine 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. I know from many convos that many feel trapped in this golden cage. I am glad (and grateful to my foresight) to be self-employed since 2014. Crossed the Rubicon. If you consider yourself an innovator, disruptor, focus your eyes on the right side of the box below. Auto-Pilot: OutplacementAudacious Spiral: OpportunityLiftShuffle employees between sinking shipsOrg innovation through self-organised micropreneursManagers execute layoffs, then get laid offManagers become ecosystem enablersKick-off pledges fade fastBlockchain-locked budgets make it real“Human as cost” mindset"Human as owner" mindset Redundancy is a Machine wordRedundancy 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.Why Outplacement will be a race to the bottomOutplacement 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. Wake up! The wolf is here this time...most likely. The Meta-OpportunityCreating 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.Wait, what is this OpportunityLift? OpportunityLift helps people exit dependency on employers by turning redundancy into a launchpad for self-owned microprepreneurship.Imagine a world where former employees become trusted partners, building new products and services on blockchain rails where the line between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the company dissolves, and everyone has a stake in the outcome.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-grantsMicropreneur pairs: Business and coder teams build onchain apps, processes, DAOsProfit over vanity metrics: Forget scale for scale’s sake. Sustainability is about owning your cash flow.For Employees:Escape dependency. Own your workCompete with (not for) your ex-employerLive on 70%: Reduce expenses, build anti-fragile savings, and reclaim your remaining life time.Why this might actually workWe’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 examplesOpportunityLift could become an adaptation of organisational life forms especially the C-Corp type.The RequirementSurely 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 CapitalismConsciousness-Based Leadership: Radical honesty, no sugar-coatingEcosystem Sprints: 90-day launches, not endless transformation programsBlockchain Tools: DAOs, smart contracts, transparency by designTribe-Filtering: For the 9% who’d rather risk their pension than their self-sovereignty (more below)Debt is the Real PandemicThe 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. Middle managers maxed on mortgages, car leasing and credit cards? They’re not “resistant to change” — they’re terrified. 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!The 9%: Your Tribe awaits youI’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.My Message to LeadersYou’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 This isn’t about saving the world. It’s about saving your soul as a leader. 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:How am I complicit in outcomes I say I don't want?How much idealism can I afford today? And want tomorrow?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 MavenOnchain is the new Online. Ready to lead while others lag? Blockchain will shape your future - don't be left behind.https://maven.comThe below is a further deep dive into the data, models, assumptions, hypotheses and observations behind the above article.Deep Dive: for Data Nerds, Practitioners & Systemic Thinkers 1. Mentor Map: Why These Voices?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. MentorContributionRelevanceLinksGabor MatéTrauma-informed leadership, compassionHealing organizational wounds, compassion in truth-tellingWebsite, LinkedInPeter CroneMindset liberation, radical honestyShifting from blame to possibilityWebsiteNora BatesonWarm Data, complexity, interdependenceMapping relationships, non-linear changeWarm Data Labs, BookKate RaworthDoughnut Economics, regenerative metricsThriving within planetary and social boundariesDoughnut Economics, ToolkitDaniel SchmachtenbergerMeta-crisis, systems thinkingCoordination, existential risk, meta-opportunityCivilization Emerging, TalkPeter KoenigMoney as mirror, Working with SourceAligning money with purpose, organizational energyMoney Work, SourceLiv BoereeAntifragility, risk, decentralized systemsBuilding systems that thrive on uncertaintyEssays, TalkStephen ReidPsychedelic integration, collective wisdomInner work, group process, creative agencyPsychedelic Society, SubstackKevin KellyTechno-optimism, long bets, systems ethicsBetting on emergence, building for the long term1000 True Fans, Long BetsSeth GodinTribe-filtering, smallest viable audienceMessaging for the few who matter mostBlog, BookTim FerrissActionable sprints, experimentationRapid prototyping, "now what?" orientation4-Hour Workweek, PodcastDerek SiversSimplicity, directness, "hell yeah or no"Radical clarity, cutting to the chaseHell Yeah or No, MojoYanis VaroufakisTechno-feudalism, power critiqueWarning against digital overlords, systemic trapsBook, EssayCharles HandyPortfolio careers, future of workShifting from jobs to roles/networksBookPeter DruckerManagement as social functionEnd of management, rise of self-managementBookPeter SengeLearning organizations, systems thinkingAgile squads, learning loops, team ownershipBookSociocracy/encode.orgSelf-organizing, ownership by designValues- and mission-aligned governanceSociocracy, encode.org2. Data SourcesAI Job Displacement:Goldman Sachs: 300M jobs at riskMcKinsey: 30% automation by 2030WEF: 40% workforce reduction plansBloomberg: 200,000 banking jobsBlockchain & Ownership Economy:WEF: Blockchain replaces 40% of intermediariesBitcoin: Fifth-largest assetEthereum: World computerEcological & Social Breakdown:IPCC: Climate risksGallup: 70% employee disengagementCDC: Loneliness epidemic3. OpportunityLift Platform: How it might workSelf-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?How many new apps, processes, or services are running?What’s the real impact on people, on the organisation, on the broader ecosystem? We want to use Doughnut dashboards to measure not just financial ROI, but also social and planetary impact. If you’re only looking at the bottom line, you’re missing the point.Why This Approach? Because the old way of HR-led redeployment, consulting-led “transformation,” or endless slide decks doesn’t work in a world where AI and blockchain are rewriting the rules. This is organisational innovation designed to adapt to the outside-in revolution most orgs are not ready for.It’s fast, because the tech is ready and the process is peer-driven.It’s resilient, because ownership is distributed and not dependent on a single leader or department.It’s fair, because everyone can see how decisions are made and where the money goes.And most importantly, it’s human. Because at the end of the day, redundancy is a machine word. Humans are never redundant. They just need a new way to own their future.4. Why Not Consulting? Why Not McKinsey?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 solutionWe are open to collaborate with mission-aligned alumni.5. High-level Choreography (spend 1 min on thisPhase 1: CEO/Board commits to Crypto treasury + smart contracts.Phase 2: Employees pitch, pair, and build via Shark Tank-style voting.Phase 3: DAOs replace departments; employees come off balance sheetsPhase 4: Continuous learning, feedback, and ecosystem expansion; employer shrinks to optimal size in niche, micropreneurs own their own cash flow and thrive

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