Codifier in Chief
One nit-picky side-effect of the surge of AI & Hype Train that causes my brain flutters, is the speed at which terms can become meaningless. A few months ago I had been tossing around Orchestrator like it was the bridge from here to anywhere we wanted to go. It did meaningfully capture the way I felt knowledge work was shifting, and it has a sense of authority and control. It brings in the concepts of Judgement or Discernment from Anthropic's 4Ds.
It gave me a way to show others how to Cross Moore's Chasm in adopting this new type of tooling. Of course the problem with using one brush for every transition, is that we slowly lose all sense of definition. If we're all orchestrators — how are we leading the same song? — what is the actual purpose of an orchestrator? — is my boss an orchestrator of orchestrators being orchestrated by an orchestrator? Are we perpetrators of cacophony? This kind of linguistic devaluing isn't unique to AI, but it happens faster. We're all trying to figure out how to work within a continually shifting field while trying to describe to anyone who'll listen what it is we think we should be doing to create value.
So what's a storyteller to do? At this point saying someone is an Agentic Orchestration Expert is the semantic equivalent of Chief Function Doer. For me the pivot has been to lean back into role-specific terms. In the engineering space that means that rather than being an Agentic Development Orchestrator, the role is specifically focused on enabling and defining standards for the codification of baseline institutional knowledge. With that type of focus, the engineer can help integrate baseline automation of the expertise. Someone definitely needs to fill the role of Facilities Manager, ensuring everything is working as expected, but the concept of orchestration should shift to arrangement — with team members playing specific roles in harmony with others.
Words come and go but I'm continually reminded that fundamental concepts are still at the heart of what we do. We're still making sausage and you don't want to mess with a good recipe.
