How to Talk to Your CEO About Modernizing Job Architecture

The other day a client asked me how I would design a “Job Architecture” that includes AI-enabled tools. Traditionally, job architecture operates on job descriptions, pay grades, titles, and roles. It gives structure, but not growth. It tells people where they sit on the org chart. Employees start to see their career as “my job at ACME”, not “my career journey at ACME”. 

Instead of traditional job architecture, it’s time for Human Potential Architecture (HPA).

What Human Potential Architecture (HPA) Is

I have explained the basis of HPA before. It is what got me into L&D in the first place. It is an idea that flips the traditional business logic on its head (the same way HPA flips job architecture). Most companies act as if people grow when the company grows. HPA starts with the inverse: The company grows because people grow.

HPA doesn’t erase structure; it adds motion to it.  You keep the anchors: strategy, accountability, and pay bands. Everything between them can flex and learn.

What doesn’t disappear:

• Accountability. Someone still owns outcomes.

• Expertise. We still need people who know marketing, finance, product, and more.

• Decision rights. Hierarchy doesn’t vanish. It just stops being the only organizing logic.

Those things stay. What changes is how they are described, connected, and updated.

What actually changes:

• Skills to Capabilities

A job description is a snapshot. HPA turns that snapshot into a data feed.Instead of “These are the skills for this job,” it becomes “Here is how the capabilities in this job are expressed today, and here is how they are evolving.” Skills are components. Capabilities are systems of skills plus thinking patterns. AI and analytics keep the capability picture current.

• Boxes on a chart to capability networks.

The org chart still exists for reporting lines. Under it lives a map of capabilities. You can see who has what strengths, where collaboration clusters form, and how work really flows. The formal hierarchy runs the business. The capability network grows it.

• Job titles to fluid roles.

Titles don’t vanish, but they stop defining the person. Someone may hold a “Product Manager” title while contributing to a “Customer Experience” capability project for a quarter. That cross-pollination builds both the person and the organization.

• Performance reviews to readiness signals.

Instead of annual “meets expectations,” the system reads signals of growth—new capabilities applied, new connections formed, new problems solved—and uses those to suggest learning or stretch assignments. Job descriptions document what exists. Human Potential Architecture designs what can emerge. It’s not about abolishing hierarchy, it’s about making hierarchy learning-aware.

]The Core Shift to Explain to Your CEO

If you want to upgrade your job architecture, talk to your CEO. And when you talk to your CEO, frame it this way:

“Our current architecture manages positions. The new one manages potential.”

Then make the business case:

We keep the visible hierarchy for accountability and decision-making, while an invisible capability network enables continuous learning and evolution. AI and L&D form the connective layer between the two systems. 

• Hierarchical Structure for Execution (no change): CEO, CFO, COO, VPs, Functions, etc.

• Capability Network (Growth): Adaptive Thinking, AI Collaboration Strategic Influence, People Leadership, Data Literacy, Coaching, Systems Design, etc. 

AI and L&D act as connective tissue between the layers, translating learning data, feedback, and capability growth. The organization begins to function like a neural network, capable of continuous growth. 

The Science Behind It

In my book The AI-Enhanced Leader: How to Upgrade Your Thinking and Leading (2025), I introduced a framework called Perceptive Cognition, the ability to see differently, reframe rapidly, and intentionally rewire how we think.

Human Potential Architecture scales that same principle across an entire organization. It becomes Perceptive Cognition at enterprise scale: a system that continually observes itself, learns, and grows stronger with every cycle of feedback.

The neuroscience is simple: repetition and reflection build new neural pathways. Organizationally, repeated collaboration and feedback build new capability pathways.

In both cases, learning becomes the mechanism of evolution.

What It Looks Like in Practice

Traditional HR says:

“You’re in Grade 5; your next promotion is Grade 6 after three years.”

A modern system says:

“You’re at Level 3 in communication and Level 2 in systems thinking.If you focus on data interpretation and strategic influence, here are projects and mentors that accelerate your growth to Level 4 readiness.”

The system tracks growth against clearly defined capability levels, not just tenure. That’s not paperwork — that’s progress.

It’s a conversation that makes development tangible, measurable, and personal.

Why this works

This works because it’s not a theory. It’s an agility strategy.

• It shortens the time between skill need and skill readiness.

• It turns learning data into performance insight.

• It makes the company’s structure as adaptive as its technology.

In short: it makes people systems work at the speed of business.

Every company already has the raw material for Human Potential Architecture, the untapped growth potential of its people. The question isn’t whether you have it. The question is when you’ll start designing for it. If you’re ready to begin, I can help.