Reflections 13th April

Time for a New Magic?

Apr 13, 2025

There are things that we can repair, and make as good as new. There are things that we can repair and make them better than the original. Then, there are new things we can make from the parts of broken things. Sometimes, though, there are things that are beyond repair that have served their time and need to be consigned to history.

Relationships divide the things we can repair or reconfigure and those we are prepared to eliminate.

Economic Utility Theory tells us when something will no longer provide a return and needs to be replaced. It’s a clinical decision. However, things we have a relationship with are different - they get much more leeway.

In the UK, utility theory would have caused us to replace the NHS long ago, but our relationship with it is such that we are still wrestling with it. It is part of our identity. It is taking time, and when we eventually repair it, the original ethos will still be there, holding the parts of whatever is created together.

Boeing has, over time, made some of the finest aircraft in the world, but somewhere along the way, the love of flying that created it got trumped by owners and leaders steeped in utility theory. The result is that we are left with a hollow shell whose reputation will take decades to recover, if indeed it can recover at all.

Similarly, in the UK, we have a long history of producing iconic sports cars with a surfeit of character and an insufficiency of reliability. The utilitarians won that conflict, and so we have ended up with Jaguar, relying on its heritage to imbue remnants of character on increasingly unremarkable executive transport.

Teaching and medicine are two of the most important jobs on earth, yet we have managed to sacrifice the joy of human contribution at their heart in favour of joyless, efficient economic extraction. The list could go on and on.

Utility theory has created a great deal of wealth if we define it in money. It comes, though, at great cost to what makes us human.

Efficiency, Productivity and Returns are the mantra of the Utilitarians. This mantra has shaped our businesses for the last fifty years, infected our public services, and contaminated our education system. It has brought us governments - most evidently today in America, but here in the UK, we have no right to criticise - willing to trade character and integrity for profit.

It is startling to witness the possibility of the dollar losing its status as a reserve currency as trust in it evaporates, driven by a small group acting as though they are following an Ayn Rand script.

The real tragedy is that when a clumsy utilitarian magician loses the crowd, the magic disappears, the shabby trick is revealed for what it is, and the crowds leave.

We need a New Magic to inspire us.

Yesterday, an email about storytelling from a friend in Australia, Mark Easdown, lit a path to the idea of a New Magic.

He shared an insight from a conversation on the nature of AI, using the metaphor of a calculator.

If your strengths are not in numeracy, a calculator is a valuable tool and something of an equaliser - it doesn't make us good at maths, but it allows us to access some of the benefits we might otherwise be denied. For a mathematician, a calculator saves time. For a non-mathematician, it offers capability. For those weak in narrative and writing skills, AI is like a calculator. It is an equaliser.

AI is part of the new magic. It makes whole swathes of middle management and billable-in-six-minute-increments professions superfluous at the same time that it enables individuals to create value by wandering far outside the walls of their job descriptions. We can outsource data and logic much more easily than imagination and meaning.

We must remember, though, that while technology offers a shortcut, it does not impart understanding. (Something maybe those who created the infamous Tariff "Bingo Boards" may now be realising)

As is often the case, when it comes to elegance of thinking, the Japanese point the way, and I find this true where the boundaries of craft and utility meet. I've written recently about Kintsugi and Yobitsugi - the Japanese arts of elegant repair and repurposing. Mark's mail added another:

Jidoka - “automation with a human touch”.

Efficiency, productivity, and ensuring economic returns are vital parts of our economic systems, but only a part of them.

A deeper conflict lies beneath the current noise on tariffs. We have allowed our humanity to be enslaved by utility. We see its absence in the language being used, the tactics, and the desperation.

We need to hospice these toxic approaches if we are to put the undoubted benefits of utility in service of our humanity.

New Magic relies on far more than the blunt instruments of data and logic. New Artisan values of craft and vocation are deeply tied to personal identity, purpose, and intrinsic motivation. They invoke inspiration, pride, and a sense of meaning. The work reflects who someone is.

“I am a potter,” “I am a teacher,” “I am a doctor”. “I was called to this work.”

Craft invites slow mastery. There’s room for curiosity, iteration, and imperfection. Becoming better over the years. Vocation accepts the long arc—commitment over time.

Efficiency, in contrast, is obsessed with short-term gains, compressed cycles, and instant optimisation. Time is sliced into tasks, and value is measured per unit of time.

Craft and vocation often embrace uncertainty, nuance, and the non-linear. There’s room for complexity, the unknown and the power of mystery, whereas efficiency tends to fear ambiguity. It seeks control, standardisation, and predictability.

Craft and vocation ask: "What is good, true, and worth doing?”
Efficiency often asks: How fast? How much? How cheap?”

One nourishes the self. The other consumes it.

Tariff mentality is fearful, insecure, entitled, short-term, paranoid and unimaginative. It is destructive. It diminishes us.

We should have no part in it.

As what we are used to breaks, there will be elements we choose to repair, some we choose to repurpose, and some we must consign to history.

The values that have brought us to now have reached the end of their utility. They no longer serve, they impede, and it is time to replace them.

Choosing will matter.

New Magic values data, logic, efficiency and productivity in the service of something much more significant than money. New Magic is fuelled by what we have learned how to do but is driven by very different values.

We know the magic works, even if sometimes, we don’t know how.

Like planting a tree, the best time to have started was thirty years ago. The next best time is now.

There are things we can repair.

Not all Capital is toxic. Much of it seeks more than money and will welcome approaches embracing deeper values. Equally, some great organisations with great cultures - typically owned and led by founders or those close to them, still retain the essence of the energy on which they were founded.

Others, like Tolkien's Ring Wraiths, are exhausted and looking to rest. We should let them.

In the space they vacate, the changes we are experiencing create gaps for new growth. Just this week, I saw two draft proposals for new businesses that excite me because they have elements of new magic within them.

They are not fanciful - anything but - they address real need in a way that sees money as fuel, not destination. What they offer will make a difference way beyond very healthy financial returns. They are proposals with depth and soul. They make me smile.

One of the interesting things about them is that they will attract the talent and skills they need, who, in turn, will create the structure. They need scaffolds, not plans. They can be organic.

I think that is the key. The entities that will create healthy growth are organic in nature rather than engineered. They will not follow templates or best practices - they will shape themselves to the needs of those they serve, energised by networks of talent who will find the support they need in a way diametrically opposed to the recruitment practices of utilitarian “livestock” organisations.

Organisations in service of those in them, not third parties.

Some may scale - not out of intent, but through necessity. Some may not, instead, make healthy returns at a local level and grow communities.

I find the idea of bringing repaired organisations, retaining the best of what we have learned, together with new entities operating in new, more organic ways in a more diverse economy, an exciting prospect.

And now is the time.

The old magic has been exposed. It is time to replace it.

Every Wednesday at 5:00 pm UK time, a group of us gather to share ideas and explore the possibilities emerging outside the walls of "old magic" organisations. If you'd like to join us, drop me a line.

Things I’ve liked this week:

Scott Galloway. Staying calm is easier when someone else can be more fluently pissed off on your behalf. I love Scott Galloway’s writing, and this is on the money.

So is Gaping Void.