Every agency has a Barry. Ours is called Barry. He runs IT, he is paid the least, and he holds the only working password. In January, Malcom declared that AI would let us “remove the Barry layer” from the business. He called it a framework. I called the papers, just in case.
Step one: identify what Barry does
Harder than it sounds. Nobody knew. We asked Barry, who said “everything”, which we wrote down as a negotiating position. We then watched him for a week. He fixed the printer, reset the Wi-Fi, recovered Perry's inbox twice and kept the server in the kitchen breathing. We agreed AI could do all of this, in principle.
Step two: buy the AI
We bought the enterprise plan. To set it up you need an admin account. The admin account needs a password. Barry has the password.
Step three: ask the AI for a restructure
Once Barry had set it up for us, we asked it to identify the roles it could replace. It suggested the strategy function, the creative function and, after reading the board minutes, both founders. It kept Barry. It described him as “the only critical dependency in the organisation”. Malcom says the model is wrong. The model says Malcom has said that about every model.
Step four: crisis comms
The restructure document was shared, by accident, with the whole company, by me. I then spent three days explaining that “remove the Barry layer” was a metaphor. It was not a metaphor. I smoked forty a day for those three days, which is double my usual and, I believe, a personal best.
Where we landed
Barry is still here. The AI is still here. The AI now reports to Barry. Barry is still not invited to the away day. We are calling this a hybrid model, and it will be the subject of my talk at Cannes.
