The Talent Liberation Manifesto
Why most companies are destroying their most valuable resource
When I sat down with Erik Ringertz, former CEO and self-described "producer" at Netlight, I expected our conversation to revolve around their famously chief-less organization structure. What I got instead was a masterclass in organizational consciousness and talent philosophy that runs much deeper than any org chart could capture.
Here's the thing: most discussions about unconventional organizational models focus on the obvious, tangible elements – "they don't have managers" or "everyone gets a vote." What gets lost is the profound why behind these structures, the philosophy that drives them, and the thoughtful evolution that created them.
The talent game most companies are playing wrong
While everyone talks about "talent" these days, few organizations actually understand what it means in their specific context. Erik put it bluntly:
"If you want to work with talent, you must have a very strong understanding of what talent means for your company. Most talent thinking goes wrong because people believe it's a generic concept, that there are generically talented and untalented people."
This misconception leads to a fundamental error: companies hire "talent" without creating the conditions for that talent to thrive. Even worse, many actively destroy the talent they've carefully recruited.
Erik observed that many traditional consulting firms excel at hiring exceptionally bright people, often with little practical experience but strong academic backgrounds. So far, so good. But then they lock this talent into rigid processes, essentially committing what Erik calls "talent destruction."
Netlight's transformation began with a simple but powerful question: If we've successfully become a talent magnet, how do we ensure we don't destroy the talent we attract?
The talent liberation philosophy
Wait, that can't be right... but actually, maybe it is? Conventional wisdom says that talent needs to be managed, directed, controlled within predefined boundaries. But what if that approach fundamentally misunderstands what talent actually is?
"When you hire talent, you should let talent express itself, otherwise you've destroyed the talent," Erik explained.
This wasn't about having a chief-less organization for its own sake. It was about recognizing that they had accumulated genuine talent and needed to set it free. The organizational structure followed the philosophy, not the other way around.
The foundation of this approach is radical trust. When I asked if he could really trust that talent liberation would lead to business success, Erik responded with characteristic insight:
"If we've hired these people who are good, why would I believe it would go wrong? I generally don't believe people intentionally want to do poorly. And now we've hired people who are good. So why would I think it would go badly?"
The talent production system
Building an organization based on talent liberation isn't just about hiring smart people and getting out of their way. Erik described Netlight's approach as having two distinct components:
Recruiting the right people - Finding individuals whose talents align with what the company needs, not just generically "talented" people.
Building consultants - Creating systems to help these talented individuals develop faster and more effectively than they would on their own.
This second component is crucial and often overlooked. Talent doesn't just emerge fully formed – it requires cultivation, challenges, and an environment where growth is expected and supported.
Unlike traditional "talent management" programs that focus on identifying and developing a select few high-potentials, Netlight's approach assumes that everyone hired is talented and deserves investment in their development.
What's particularly striking is how this approach rejects the traditional divide between "talent" and "non-talent" employees. Erik noted that at Netlight, they expect each generation of hires to be better than the previous one – creating a virtuous cycle where more experienced employees gain fulfillment from helping newer talent develop.
Consciousness as a competitive advantage
Throughout our conversation, Erik kept returning to the concept of consciousness – being deeply aware of why decisions are made, questioning assumptions, and consistently examining the purpose behind actions.
"Processes are born from dialogue, from consciousness," he explained. "The danger is that the better the process becomes, the more it kills consciousness. It becomes autopilot. You just say 'do it this way and it will be good.' Everyone does it. And if it goes on long enough, people can no longer see the consciousness behind it."
This insight has profound implications for how organizations should approach everything from strategy to day-to-day operations. When processes become substitutes for thinking – follow these steps exactly and everything will be fine – they create brittle organizations incapable of adapting to change.
The antidote? Maintaining a culture of asking "why" at all levels. Erik expressed frustration with the common notion that strategic thinking is reserved for senior leadership: "The worst is when you say, 'why is something you get to think about later in your career.' No wonder those who sit later in their careers are useless if they've gone to that school – not thinking about why, and then suddenly coming into a management team where now they need to."
The AI challenge to organizational consciousness
When our conversation turned to AI, Erik offered a refreshingly different perspective from the standard "jobs will be automated" narrative. He sees AI as the next step in freeing humans from work that isn't suited for them in the first place.
"Machines are good at representing repetitive work where creativity is harmful, where there should be no deviation... This is just a development of general robotization. People shouldn't be on assembly lines doing the same thing over and over – that's not good for the arm, a machine should do that."
But he expressed a deep concern about organizations approaching AI with the wrong mindset. The real danger isn't AI itself, but a "genuinely stupid, ignorant approach" to it – treating AI outputs as simple answers rather than starting points for iterative exploration.
"If we're not looking for an interesting dialogue, if there's no iteration, no learning... you need a learning organization. And most organizations aren't learning organizations. How do you break that cycle?"
The play revolution waiting to happen
Toward the end of our conversation, Erik shared something he's been thinking about but hasn't spoken much about externally: the concept of play as an organizational principle.
"If you look at how play works, it's the most superior organizational form," he explained. "Person and task are inseparable. Everyone must bring something to the table, otherwise they have nothing to do there. It becomes automatic accountability because it's only in the practice that it continues."
This wasn't about "gamification" or having ping-pong tables in the office. It was about work itself becoming playful – approaching challenges with the combination of seriousness and joy that characterizes deep play.
Most provocatively, Erik suggested that play isn't something organizations should turn to when things are going well, but precisely when they're struggling: "When you really need to play is when things are going badly. That's when you've gotten stuck in something. That's when you need to bring out playfulness."
The lingering question
As I reflect on our conversation, I'm left with a question that feels increasingly urgent in this era of AI, automation, and rapidly shifting business models: What if the conventional wisdom about organizational design is exactly backward?
What if the path to higher performance isn't more control, more process, more structure – but less? What if the businesses that will thrive in the coming decades won't be those with the most sophisticated management systems, but those that have created environments where human creativity, consciousness, and play can flourish?
Most organizations still operate on industrial-age principles – breaking work into discrete, controllable components and treating humans as interchangeable parts in a machine. But as Erik's experience at Netlight suggests, there may be a fundamentally different approach waiting to be more widely embraced.
The question isn't whether your organization should have managers or not. The question is whether you're creating conditions where talent can truly express itself – or whether you're slowly, systematically destroying it.
