People Business with O'Brien McMahon
How Work Gets Done—and How It Evolves for AI
Hosted by O'Brien McMahon
David Dean and O’Brien McMahon explore hidden workplace systems, process drift, lived experience, self-service versus controlled AI, and discovery before organizational change.
Conversation summary
This conversation defines hidden systems as the undocumented steps between the official steps of work. Standard procedures, org charts, and job descriptions show how work is supposed to happen. The unwritten contract contains the conversations, judgment, relationships, and adaptations that make those steps possible in practice.
David explains that the inbox is where much of that distributed system becomes observable. Emails, messages, meeting notes, transcripts, and other collaboration data preserve the issues, praise, failures, decisions, and exchanges through which work moves. AI can support self-discovery across those artifacts, but people still own the judgment required to interpret and act on what it finds.
The episode also introduces process drift: a workaround becomes an embedded pattern when the documented process repeatedly fails to fit reality. Leaders can treat those patterns as evidence for improvement, distinguish personal self-service solutions from repeatable controlled AI, and build bottom-up change around the ways people actually work.
Five key insights
- The moves between the documented moves often contain the most important operational knowledge.
- The inbox is a distributed record of the hidden system across communication and collaboration data.
- AI can reveal relationship and process patterns, but lived experience and human judgment remain part of the system.
- Process drift occurs when repeated adaptations become embedded ways of working outside the official process.
- Sustainable AI adoption grows from employee discovery and bottom-up cultural learning rather than creation before understanding.
Questions answered
Why do hidden workplace systems form?
They form because employees still need to deliver outcomes when a documented process does not fit a situation, leaving people to coordinate, improvise, and use the tools available to them.
What is process drift?
Process drift occurs when people repeatedly adapt around a documented process and the workaround gradually becomes an embedded part of how the work actually happens.
When should self-service AI become controlled AI?
When the same valuable pattern appears across many employees or a recurring business process, the organization should consider a consistent, governed solution rather than hundreds of personal copies.
What should leaders do before designing an AI solution?
Slow down and discover what is actually happening, how people feel, why the work evolved, what artifacts carry it, and which human needs the proposed change must preserve.
Conversation guide
The hidden systems between documented steps
Watch at 4:35 →How the unwritten contract makes official processes work in practice.
Lived experience and the moves between the moves
Watch at 7:16 →Why responsibility, accountability, and embodied experience keep people essential.
The inbox as the hidden system’s record
Watch at 9:41 →Where distributed communication and collaboration preserve how work actually happens.
AI as a self-awareness tool
Watch at 11:42 →Using personal and workplace artifacts to discover voice, behavior, and opportunity.
Human judgment inside the AI system
Watch at 17:12 →Why suggestions from AI still require knowledge, taste, and lived experience.
How leaders uncover team-level hidden systems
Watch at 20:57 →Moving from pattern discovery to a human conversation about root causes.
Process drift and survival spreadsheets
Watch at 24:13 →How repeated workarounds become embedded behavior when official systems fall short.
Self-service versus controlled AI
Watch at 27:05 →When a valuable individual workaround should become a repeatable organizational solution.
Bottom-up adoption and cultural rollup
Watch at 35:04 →Why sustainable AI change starts with employee discovery and smaller pockets of culture.
Discovery before creation
Watch at 43:03 →Slowing down to understand what is happening before applying AI to the work.
Timecodes link to the corresponding moments in the original conversation.
Edited transcript excerpts
Speaker labels and punctuation were reconstructed from automated transcription and edited for readability.
“AI does not understand confidence, risk, or consequence. People do, and that is why people still matter.”
“There is the documented system—standard operating procedures, org charts, and job descriptions. Then there is the unwritten contract, or undocumented system, which is how the business really runs.”
“The undocumented work is not just about tasks. Humans naturally bring lived experience and understand lived consequence. It is not just what they know; it is in their bodies.”
“The hidden system is documented in our communication and collaboration data. The issues, problems, challenges, praise, and failures are all documented in what I call the inbox.”
“Before you figure out what AI can do for you, document what you do and have AI help you understand where those opportunities are. Use it for self-realization and self-discovery.”
“You still own the judgment call because you are part of the system. You have knowledge and lived experience that you need to inject into what AI produces.”
“Ask what behaviors are happening and infer the potential root cause. Then make it human: go talk to the people and ask whether that is the challenge they are facing.”
“When the documented process does not work, someone finds a way to address the issue. If that happens enough, it becomes an embedded pattern in the process.”
“The business will find a way. Build an ecosystem where there is acceptable self-service use and a culture that can push a recurring need toward a centralized solution.”
“AI is a change-management exercise, but it is not about AI. It is about changing who you are as an organization and the way you think as an organization.”
“Slow down and rediscover yourself as a person, a leader, a team, and an organization. If AI is designed to mimic human behavior, make it human.”
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