Management 10.0: Optimizing the Thought Supply Chain
Reasoning is scarce. Knowing when to think, when to outsource to an agent, and when to automate is the new management.
In the industrial age, we optimized the supply chain of physical goods.
- “Just-in-time” delivery.
- Lean manufacturing.
- Six Sigma.
- Reducing inventory.
We treated atoms like precious resources. We tracked every screw and every bolt.
In the agentic age, we must optimize the Supply Chain of Thinking.
Reasoning is Scarce
High-quality, distinct human reasoning is the most expensive resource on Earth. It is rarer than lithium. It is more valuable than gold. And yet, we squander it. We waste brilliant minds on scheduling meetings. We waste them on summarizing PDFs. We waste them on formatting spreadsheets.
This is “Cognitive Waste.”
The Cognitive Triage
The job of the modern manager is not to “manage people.” It is to triage tasks based on the Thinking Required.
You have a spectrum of intelligence available to you:
- Zero-Thought Tasks (Rote) -> Pipeline Automation. (Zapier, Scripts). no intelligence needed. Just rules.
- Low-Context Reasoning (Standard) -> Autonomous Agent. (OpenClaw, standard LLMs). “Summarize this,” “Draft a reply,” “Find the error.” Standard work.
- High-Context Reasoning (Novel) -> Human + Agent Pair. (Collaborative problem solving). “How do we enter the Japanese market?” “Why is this user segment churning?” This requires back-and-forth.
- Critical Reasoning (Moral/Strategic) -> Human Only. (The buck stops here). “Should we fire this person?” “Should we pivot the company?” “Is this ethical?”
Stop Thinking When You Should
The most efficient organizations—and nations—will be the ones that know when to stop thinking.
When a problem is solved, automate the solution. Turn the “thought” into code. Turn the “judgment” into a prompt. Codify your best practices into agent instructions so you never have to “re-solve” the same problem twice.
Free up the human mind for the next problem. The only renewable energy we truly have is curiosity. Don’t burn it on admin. Save it for the breakthrough.
