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Every previous technological revolution carried within it opportunities for displaced workers. The AI revolution is different: it’s not a specific tool, but a general labour replacement, and it performs best at exactly the cognitive work that has until now formed the career path for knowledge workers. Put simply, from this point on, businesses need fewer people. The ladder itself is dissolving, and those in the middle of it can feel the change.
The Next Rung speaks to anyone who senses that the explanations from the top about how work is shifting don’t match what they are seeing. It doesn’t just help them understand what’s happening, it sets out the specific moves they can make to future-proof their own role, household and family this week.
Chris Simmons is one of those building the AI tools that are doing the displacing. He advises the business owners making the decisions about how to structure their workforce, and educates the children who will inherit what is left. Uncomfortable, honest, yet ultimately constructive, The Next Rung is essential reading for anyone ready to face the reality of the future of work.
Chris Simmance is a UK-based entrepreneur on three sides of the AI displacement question. He runs Orca, an AI operations platform that automates the work of a PA, social media manager, CRM administrator, research analyst, and junior strategist for a fraction of the cost. He previously co-founded Enterprise Skills, an EdTech platform measuring eight employer-valued human capabilities through business simulations, used in UK schools. His advisory practice at OMG Center works with professional services principals on AI, strategy, and growth; the honest conclusion is increasingly that businesses need fewer people. The Next Rung is his first trade book. Four earlier industry titles were self-published alongside his consulting work. It draws on all three roles, the builder, the educator, and the advisor, to map what is coming and what can be done about it.
Epigraph — Mohandas K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth.
Preface
Prologue: The Builder's Dilemma
Part One: The Ground Moves
Chapter 1: The Absorption Problem
Chapter 2: The Orchestrator
Chapter 3: What's Being Displaced (And What Isn't)
Chapter 4: The Quiet Squeeze
Chapter 5: The Numbers
Part Two: The Breaking
Chapter 6: Critical Mass
Chapter 7: The Mortgage Problem
Chapter 8: The World Breaks Differently
Chapter 9: Flashpoints
Part Three: The Reshaping
Chapter 10: The Trough and the Turn
Chapter 11: What Work Becomes
Chapter 12: The New Institutions
Chapter 13: The Classroom of the Future
Part Four: The Choices
Chapter 14: The Honest Audit
Chapter 15: Positioning, Not Predicting
Part Five: After the Ladder
Chapter 16: The Prosperity That Wasn't
Chapter 17: The Question We're Really Asking