I’ve mentioned before how the use of AI in your organization will be making the base of your organization’s pyramid narrower, and how this could impact succession, and in turn competitiveness, and in turn the stability of your enterprise value.

The question comes up, how do we know if we’ve got this going on?

Here’s a ratio to keep an eye on:

number of people at the top / number of incoming freshmen

Watch how this ratio evolves. Don’t worry too much about any one data point, pay more attention to the trend over time. Has there been a big move in the narrowing direction over the past 5 years?

You probably don’t need to get too scientific with this. Rough, imprecise numbers are probably fine. Back of the napkin. If it takes you more than 15 minutes to gather the data, you’re probably wasting time.

With AI now, you’ll probably see that ratio getting closer to 1.0 over time. That’s not inherently good or bad. Just be aware that the base of your pyramid is shrinking, that a large part of it is probably due to the use of AI in your organization, and that it is making the ties between your seniors and the remaining juniors increasingly important.