The Optimisation Lie: how process-ism is stealing our creativity

Markus Albers, author and researcher based in Berlin, has spent more than a decade imagining a freer, more flexible future of work. But in today’s hyperconnected, hybrid reality, that dream has taken a darker turn. In this conversation with WORKTECH Academy, Albers reflects on why knowledge work is under strain, how AI might offer a way forward, and what kind of working world we should be striving to build next.

WTA: Tell me a bit about yourself and how you think work has evolved in the past 10 years.

MA: I’ve been looking into the topic of how work is changing for many years. In my book Morgen komm ich später rein (‘Tomorrow I’ll come in later’), published in 2008, I challenged the time and location constraints of traditional work models, and championed a model where we wouldn’t have to go into the office every day. This was long before these developments became widespread in society.

After that, in Meconomy, I explored whether, in this more fluid working world without daily 9-to-5 routines, the idea of permanent employment was old-fashioned, and how we could instead work by our own rules and according to our individual needs.

These positive utopias haven’t quite come to fruition. In 2018, in Digitale Erschöpfung (‘Digital Exhaustion’), I described how the increasingly mobile and flexible working world – contrary to expectations – isn’t making us more productive, creative, and happier. Instead of chaining us to a desk, it’s now chaining us to screens. And why, instead of greater freedom, work is seeping into every last part of our lives.

This issue has been hugely exacerbated in recent years by the massive spread of hybrid working models – and now affects knowledge workers in nearly all sectors. I’d argue that if as a society we don’t get a handle on this, we’ll soon find ourselves in a dystopia. An always-on working world dominated by tools and processes that nobody wanted – but from which we can no longer escape.

At the WORKTECH Berlin 2025 conference, you mentioned that ‘knowledge work is broken’ – can you elaborate on that statement?

Our working world is currently being turned upside down by two phenomena – one clearly positive, the other potentially disastrous. Firstly, there’s hybrid work, which has now hit the mainstream: knowledge workers will never again commute daily to the same office to spend eight hours at the same desk. Time and location flexibility are also increasing in service and production jobs. Most people see this as a good thing.

However, this comes hand-in-hand with a culture of maximum work intensification, permanent distraction, and constant availability: digital collaboration has increased massively. Our calendars are packed with calls and meetings from morning till night. We’re also available for work after hours and on holiday. Concentration, or even contemplation, is becoming increasingly impossible.

‘Instead of chaining us to a desk, work is now chaining us to screens …’

The never-ending and constantly interrupting uniformity of digital workflows is probably the most significant problem in our modern working world. Hans Rusinek, who researches these topics at the University of St. Gallen, describes this in two dimensions:

• • The incorporeality of digital work (nothing is truly finished or even tangible) and,
  • The undermining of one’s own quality standards (a task rarely gets the time it needs).

Knowledge workers now spend almost 60% of their time on communication tools, but only 40% on creation software. The number of meetings has increased two-and-a-half-fold compared to pre-pandemic times. A majority of employees don’t have enough time and energy to get their work done – and are finding it increasingly difficult to be innovative or think strategically. Managers are already feeling the impact and report that a lack of innovation or groundbreaking ideas in their teams is a problem.

In short: we’re organising and communicating more and more, but we’re creating less and less. We use the most modern tools, but the quantity and quality of innovation are measurably declining worldwide.

At the same time, the New Work promise of working more efficiently and thus less through technology and self-organisation isn’t being fulfilled. In 2023 alone, German employees worked around 1.3 billion overtime hours, more than half of which were unpaid. So work isn’t just becoming more tightly scheduled, but simply: more.

‘We need a more alluring narrative of what successful work can look like…’

According to the American researcher Cal Newport, this dilemma leads to a Great Exhaustion among knowledge workers – a term that mirrors the theme of my last book, ‘Digital Exhaustion’. As a solution, Newport recommends less collaboration and more focused work. That’s true, and I’ve described that often too. But it doesn’t go far enough.

Today, all knowledge work is subjected to the merciless monotony of the digital. There’s no beginning or end, hardly any climax or anticlimax anymore. The next day always brings the next stand-up, the next assets. You could describe this as galloping process-ism, and it seems there’s no alternative. That’s precisely why we need a different, more alluring narrative of what successful work can look like.

How is AI impacting the way we work today?

When you talk to the tech companies whose tools we currently spend most of our working day using, you’ll find a slightly grudging acknowledgment that they might have overdone it with their enthusiasm for processes and tools. Most of them also have the solution to the dilemma they largely caused: Artificial Intelligence (AI) will fix it.

For Microsoft, the results of its global Work Trend Index show that there’s certainly a market for this: 70% of respondents want to delegate as much work as possible to AI to reduce their workload. ‘It’s fascinating,’ says organisational psychologist Adam Grant: ‘More people are excited about AI saving them from burnout than worried about losing their jobs.’ A clear majority wishes AI would help them find information and answers, summarise meetings and tasks, and plan their day. Managers hope AI will support employees with necessary but repetitive tasks, increase employee satisfaction, and reduce the time their teams spend on non-value-adding activities.

Microsoft also asked respondents to imagine the future of work. It becomes particularly clear here that many are hoping for AI as a salvation from ‘process-ism.’ Respondents imagine that by 2030 at the latest, they will be able to produce high-quality work in half the time, know how to use their time and energy most effectively, and never again have to deal with unnecessary or irrelevant information.

What are your views on AI adoption across Germany, and globally? Are you seeing any generational or role differences in adoption?

Virtually every company I am talking to these days in my roles as advisor or a researcher is looking into ways to implement AI into their workflows, and I can’t really see a difference between Germany and the rest of the world. The same goes for generations and role: there are some individuals who are reluctant to use AI tools but most are at least trying them out.

You’ve previous mentioned that we are ‘using innovation tools but innovation itself is flat-lining’ – why is this?

The theories of researchers Torrance and Runco suggest that creativity seemingly has contradictory prerequisites: seclusion and communication, solitary thought and external input, quiet reflection and public discussion. So, neither the cliché of the reclusive genius creating their greatest works in isolation is generally true, nor can truly new things emerge amidst a daily barrage of distractions. To be creative, one needs alternating phases of intense information intake, solitary contemplation, and communicative engagement.

‘To be creative, one needs alternating phases on solitary contemplation and communicative engagement…’

But if there’s one thing missing in the new world of work, it’s concentration. Or even contemplation. When was the last time you looked out the window at the clouds and let your thoughts wander freely? I mean, for longer than 10 seconds, without a ‘PING!’ pulling you out of your thoughts? Exactly. So, could it be that permanent digital communication and ‘process-ism’ are robbing us of the ability to be creative? And eroding the conditions for bringing new things into the world?

After all, the global innovation curve has been trending downwards for some time now. We’re apparently getting worse at finding new ideas. This has various reasons: on one hand, there are fewer fundamental discoveries left to make – you can only invent the wheel or genome sequencing once. And where new inventions are still hiding, they are increasingly difficult to find. A frequently cited example is pharmacology – bringing new effective drugs to market is becoming ever more protracted, complex, and thus more expensive. At the same time, the probability of failure increases.

And so, economist Tyler Cowen argues that humanity may have already picked all the low-hanging fruit in its discoveries. His colleague Robert Gordon scoffs at recent technological achievements: none of them are even remotely as important for human wellbeing as the toilet. The radical change and rapid growth generated by the innovations of the 19th and 20th centuries are largely absent today. ‘We were promised flying cars,’ goes an internet meme attributed to investor Peter Thiel, ‘and we got 140 characters’ – referring to the text limit of the former social media platform Twitter.

So, if it’s already harder to be innovative today than it used to be, why do we make it even harder for ourselves? Researchers at the University of Chicago analysed how daily life in an IT company changed with hybrid work. The result: workdays were longer, yet employees had less time to concentrate than before. All the additional working time was filled with meetings. ‘The real source of inefficiency was – surprise – time spent in meetings,’ commented The Economist.

How can we use digital tools to enhance our performance as humans?

The idea of a self-determined, fluid working world has existed for some time. In the early 2000s, author Dan Pink postulated a ‘Free Agent Nation.’ The platform economy for low-skilled jobs, with providers like Uber or solutions like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, led to more freedom for many – but also to self-exploitation and bogus self-employment.

Some organisations attempt to connect employees with the right projects through internal talent marketplaces. The idea of creating a new type of decentralised autonomous organisation (DAOs) via blockchain technology hasn’t caught on. Common to all these approaches is that they work at best for defined areas or specific industries.

Now, however, thanks to generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), we finally have the technological prerequisites to implement such ideas on a broad scale. A successful ‘fluidification’ of work processes would also trigger an enormous innovation and productivity boost economically. In times when demographic change is leading to a shrinking supply of skilled workers, there is hardly a more urgent labour market policy issue than the more efficient allocation of bright minds to the right projects.

Drew Houston, founder and CEO of the technology company Dropbox, which is dedicated to improving knowledge work, speaks of ‘a more enlightened way of working’ that is much less hectic than today and much more meaningful: ‘We’re most productive, most engaged, most fulfilled when we’re quiet, when we can focus, when we’re doing meaningful work. With the last generation of tools, we shot ourselves in the foot. I believe the next generation will be very different, helping us to focus and free ourselves.’

You have previously used the term ‘applied adhocracy’ – what does that concept involve?

I believe the future working world requires three ingredients:

• • A fluid principle of collaboration between organisations and individuals.
  • An orientation towards a platform model, where organisations create the conditions for successful work but don’t dictate all rules and processes.
  • The recognition that individual talents and human characteristics drive innovation – supported but not replaced by increasing automation through AI.

I’d like to propose calling this new model Applied Adhocracy.

The term is inspired by the model of a flexible, adaptable, and informal organisational form popularised by Alvin Toffler and elaborated by Henry Mintzberg. This form is characterised by the absence of a formal structure and the use of specialised multidisciplinary teams.

In an Adhocracy, the operational core shrinks, and the remaining organisational parts become value-creating. It can therefore react faster than traditional bureaucratic organisations and is more open to new ideas, and better at problem-solving. Mintzberg himself describes this organisational form as the most modern, as it offers the greatest innovation potential and flexibility.

However, for it to function, it requires highly developed and automated technical systems, which has largely made its application an exception until now (Wikipedia is considered a successful practical example). This prerequisite is now, thanks to AI, realistically conceivable on a broad scale for the first time.

What policies need to be in place to ensure that tech adoption is even across different user groups?

Organisations today must invest in:

• • Training for leadersto better navigate the hybrid work environment. Yes, there are already plenty of options out there, and many managers are quite digitally savvy. Yet, in my experience, almost everyone privately admits to knowledge gaps. Creating a safe space where this can be openly discussed and pragmatically addressed goes a long way.
  • Cultural development across the entire organisation to use tools and processes wisely instead of being overwhelmed by them. In HR theory, we have ‘deep-work phases,’ ‘focus Fridays,’ and ‘kill-bad-meetings initiatives.’ In practice, however, these often fall short. It’s about asking the tough questions: what internal logic keeps pushing the organisation to let harmful processes regrow?
  • Comprehensive technology consulting to critically question what new digital tools can really do, and which ones are really needed. Sure, before a new tool is introduced, five committees and three subcommittees decide, norms and standards must be met, certifications obtained… but what about user-centred common sense? What do teams truly want? What would people even use in their private lives because it works so well?

Markus Albers has a new book Die Optimierungslüge (The Optimisation Lie) which uncovers some of the concepts and ideologies discussed in this interview.

Markus Albers lives in Berlin as an author, consultant and entrepreneur. As a journalist, he has worked for Brand Eins, Monocle, Vanity Fair, Welt am Sonntag, and SZ Magazin. He is the author of several nonfiction books, including Morgen komm ich später rein, Meconomy, Rethinking Luxury, and Digitale Erschöpfung. Markus was a keynote speaker at the 2025 WORKTECH Berlin conference. Article published: 10 June 2025