TBM 417: Before You Fire All Your Glue People Because of AI
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A warning against reflexively replacing 'glue people' with AI tools. These informal connectors and formally appointed coordinators do far more than produce visible artifacts — they read weak signals, navigate organizational politics, build shared language across teams, and absorb role ambiguity. When organizations fire these people assuming AI can replicate their outputs, they lose the invisible 80%: judgment, social infrastructure, and adaptive capacity. The post introduces a COM-B framework (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation) to diagnose why a behavior isn't happening before automating it. AI works well when the only barrier is friction and time, but fails when the real barriers are unclear standards, misaligned incentives, or behaviors carried by specific trusted individuals. Key advice: diagnose before you automate, respect the iceberg, and watch for constraint shifts.
