Opening the Athanor

Over the past few weeks, I've been exploring what it means to work differently when the structures that once defined us are showing their age. I've written about lunatics and precursors, about cracks appearing in old certainties, about the scarcest luxury being attention itself. I've considered craft before content, the need for incremental change, and what it means to go freehold, to own our work rather than rent ourselves to others.

The common thread is that something fundamental is shifting. Not the surface details of which skills matter or which tools to use, but the architecture underneath: how work is bundled, priced, coordinated, and controlled.

Several of you have proposed projects that speak to this directly. Sales academies for artisan sellers. Explorations of AI as a craft tool rather than a replacement threat. Ways to uncover personal capabilities that organisations have trained us to suppress. Questions about the emotional impact of transition, the universal skills that help us navigate uncertainty, and the wayfinding practices that keep us oriented when old maps no longer work.

Looking at these proposals architecturally, I think they're asking the same fundamental question: how do we develop genuine agency when the structures that shaped us are becoming optional for some and obsolete for others?

I've considered five possible ways we might begin our Athanor explorations. Each configuration addresses different dimensions: emotional, diagnostic, tactical, and collective. Each has strengths and limitations. Each appeals to different starting points and readiness levels.

What strikes me most is we're not building a programme. We're creating space for something more essential. A place where people can feel the ground shifting, see the architecture they're actually in, experiment with new capabilities, and eventually build collective infrastructure that doesn't recreate the extraction we're trying to escape.

Alchemy. Where institutional forms decompose into something fertile. Where new possibilities can germinate without us determining in advance what they'll become.

This isn't therapy, career coaching, or leadership development. It's discovery. Learning to work in a world where the relationship between labour and capital might become negotiable rather than compulsory.

Below are the five configurations. Read them not as choices to be made but as different entry points into the same exploration. As ways of beginning a conversation about what matters most when everything we thought was permanent turns out to be contingent.

They are all optional, just thoughts on somewhere to start.

Start with the heart. Build towards the head. Act with the hands. Create with others.

Five Ways We Might Begin This Exploration

Looking at the projects people have suggested, from developing AI craft to building sales academies, from processing the emotional impact of transition to creating healthcare commons, they're remarkably coherent. Every project is asking the same fundamental question: how do we develop genuine agency when the structures that shaped us are becoming obsolete?

Here are five possible configurations:

Configuration One: The Immediate Transition

Focus on building portable capabilities right now. Sales academies, uncovering submerged craft, developing AI artisanship.

Strength: Immediately practical, tests the core thesis through doing.

Risk: Feels tactical rather than structural.

Configuration Two: The Emotional Architecture

Acknowledge that architectural transition is profoundly disorienting before it's intellectually clear. Explore the emotional impact of AI, create space for contradictory feelings, and develop wayfinding practices.

Strength: Respects where people actually are.

Risk: Allowing courageous exploration to become diluted by caution.

Configuration Three: The Structural Diagnostic

Develop the capability to see architecture rather than just our position within it. Personal strategy, system waste, and understanding new infrastructure.

Strength: Develops architectural literacy.

Risk: Analysis without action.

Configuration Four: Guild Formation

Recognises that individual unbundling requires collective infrastructure. Builds commons, not platforms. Creates mutual aid.

Strength: Most directly transformative.

Risk: Coordination challenges from day one.

Configuration Five: The Integration Path

Sequences all of them developmentally across a year. Ground and orient (months 1-3), diagnose architecture (4-6), experiment with unbundling (7-9), build collective infrastructure (10-12).

Strength: Most comprehensive.

Risk: Most demanding.

Where We Begin

I think starting with Configuration Two (Emotional Architecture) gives us flexibility, whilst signalling a route towards Configuration Five (the full integration path). Because most people experiencing this transition are feeling it before they can think it clearly. The disorientation is real. The anxiety about expertise becoming architectural debt is paralysing. We can't do honest structural diagnosis when we're defending against existential anxiety.

It also allows us to be our own guinea pigs and learn how to develop our own individual practices if we wish.

Starting with emotional architecture creates psychological safety, builds trust through shared vulnerability, and distinguishes us from productivity mindsets. It builds on the principle that care comes first. It embodies trust through radical transparency about what we're actually experiencing. This isn't a support group for people who feel lost. It's a developmental path towards genuine autonomy.

We're beginning an exploration of what it means to work differently when structures that employed us are becoming optional. We start by feeling the ground shift, because until we acknowledge the emotional reality of architectural transition, we can't see clearly or act wisely. But this leads somewhere: to diagnosis, experimentation, and eventually collective infrastructure building.

Each phase builds on the previous. The transition between phases is signalled through readiness, not scheduled by calendar. People develop capabilities progressively: first feeling, then seeing, then acting, then building together.

What strikes me most is that these projects are describing something quite radical, even if it feels modest. We're creating space where people can develop capabilities to separate from mandatory capital mediation, not by blueprint or prescription, but by helping them see their architecture, feel what it's doing to them, and develop practical and collective capabilities to operate differently.

It feels a little alchemical. Not by preserving the old or rushing to the new, but by developing capabilities to thrive in the transition itself.

Start with the heart. Build towards the head. Act with the hands. Create with others.