Irreplaceable · The Category of One pilot · 12 seats
The half of your job nobody measures is the half that’s staying
A free pilot for people in the middle who deliver through people they don’t manage. You bring the situation you’re stuck on and we work it in the room. By 10 December one thing you built is visible outside your own team.
A seat in this room is 9,950 SEK plus VAT. The 12 pilot seats are free, on four conditions. Applications close on Wednesday 30 September, and I read every one myself.Why now
The layer is getting thinner, and the roles that are left are being rewritten
On 10 September I ran a two-hour session for people who get their work done through others. I opened with what the numbers say about the middle layer in September 2026, and I dated it on purpose, because this part will change.
Sources: Live Data Technologies, first reported by the Wall Street Journal; Gallup, Span of Control, January 2026 (a mean, pulled up by some very large teams); Revelio Labs; Robert Half, July 2026; Korn Ferry via Fortune, April 2025.
Companies are bringing back some of the roles they cut for AI. Robert Half puts it at about a third, within months, and the management layer isn’t among them. Korn Ferry’s advice to organizations that cut too deep is to redesign the roles.
So there are fewer roles in the middle, each one carries more people, and somebody is deciding right now what goes into them. The question is whether anyone in that room knows what you do.
What AI takes first
AI is coming for the half of the job you’re measured on
Before I showed a single slide on 10 September, I asked everyone what lands on their desk every week that nobody above them ever sees. The chat filled up with following up because answers don’t come by themselves, getting things done when nobody has been given the job, and driving work that sits outside their own responsibility.
None of that is in a job description. The half that is in the job description is the half that’s easiest to describe, and anything with steps and a procedure is something an AI tool can do now.
The half that shows
- Status reporting
- Backlog grooming and meeting notes
- Documentation
- Translating up and down
- Chasing the detail
The half that holds everything together
- Getting a room to say the honest thing
- Making a decision stick
- Moving work through people who don’t report to you
- Knowing which green is red
- The meeting before the meeting
The left column is what your role is measured on. The right column turns up in no report anyone above you will read, and it’s the half that is about to become the whole job.
The six gaps
Value is moving toward the human end of the chain
In the book I’m writing, I describe six gaps that open between strategy and execution. They run as a chain, and each one creates the next.
AI presses hardest on the first three. It adds speed and output and parallel work, while the layer that used to make sense of it all gets thinner. Every team now has a faster way to build a prototype, and nobody has to check with the team next door first.
The last three are made of human contact. AI won’t build trust with the colleague who says everything is fine when it isn’t, and it won’t have the difficult conversation for you. It can’t move work through people who don’t report to you. You can use it to learn how those things work, and you still have to go and do them with a person.
Some of the gaps are built into how your organization is wired, and that part isn’t yours to fix from your chair. The capability half is yours, whatever they decide upstairs.
What you build
Six muscles you build from where you sit
These are working names until the book is printed. The rep is what matters, because it’s something you can do this week, in a meeting you already have.
Translation
Turn a vague instruction from above into a shared picture of done. Ask how they’ll do it, instead of whether it’s clear.
Calibration
Check your reading of the priority against the reading in the other function, and put the gap on the table.
Catalyst
Let pressure land where it belongs. Ask for the decision right before you accept the deadline.
In a June workshop, not one person out of 13 said their authority matched their responsibility.
Curiosity
Find out properly what one person thinks about something you’ve already decided.
In the same room, not one person out of 13 said the honest version shows up in the meeting.
Candor
Say the observable thing early, and ask for advice instead of feedback.
7 of 10 said the pattern is that we agree, and then nothing moves.
Coalition
One conversation with each key stakeholder before the decision. The people you consulted become the people who back you.
The system you leave with
Becoming a category of one
There’s a book by Joe Calloway called Becoming a Category of One, and the idea underneath it is simple. You have a domain, you have experience in it and you have insights that came from that experience. AI has none of the three. Put them together where other people can see them, and nobody else does what you do the way you do it.
Most people in the middle have the first two and have never done anything with the third. I know this one from the inside. At my last live session there were 11 people on the call. There are probably people with weaker frameworks than mine who get 200 on theirs, because they talk about their work and for years I didn’t.
So the system I run my own business on has three layers, and in the pilot you set up the first version of each for yourself.
Insight. A timeline exercise. You go back through your jobs, your moves and your hard situations, and you pull out how you handled them. When I had to find a first-hand apartment in Gothenburg with no time in the housing queue, I made a list of 72 companies with apartments listed and wrote to every one of them. Within a month we had three options. That’s a model of achievement, and you have several that live only in your head.
Frameworks. The way you approach a supplier negotiation, a stalled project or a difficult stakeholder. You’ve done it three or four times, so there’s a pattern, and the pattern is yours. We write it down in a form that makes sense to the people you want to work with.
Deployment. Your LinkedIn profile, the note your upline reads, the session you run for a peer team. If I open your profile today and I’m hiring for your role, what do I see? By the last session one thing you built is visible outside your own team, and the room reviews it before it goes out.
How it runs
Five Thursdays, 90 minutes each
Twelve people at most, one per company, so nobody from your own organization is in the room and there’s no hallway to take the honest version to. Before the first session you take the six gaps diagnostic, and we read it together so you arrive knowing where you sit.
Each session is a small part framework. Most of it is your situation, worked live with people who sit in the same seat. Between sessions you make one move in a meeting you already have, and the next session starts with what happened.
- Thursday 15 October · 15:00–16:30
- Thursday 29 October · 15:00–16:30
- Thursday 12 November · 15:00–16:30
- Thursday 26 November · 15:00–16:30
- Thursday 10 December · 15:00–16:30
All times are Stockholm and Copenhagen time. The dates go in your calendar the day you’re accepted, so you can plan around them.
What it costs you
The seat is free, and the week is what I care about
A seat in this room is 9,950 kronor plus VAT, and that’s what the next group will pay. The pilot seat is free, with no invoice at the end and nothing to buy afterwards. I’m building it with you, and nobody buys a room that has never run (I tried in June, and the paid version didn’t fill).
The thing that stops people is rarely the money. It’s the week. You already carry more than fits, and anything that adds to it gets dropped by the second week of November.
This adds almost nothing to your week. The situation you work on is one you already have, and the move goes into a meeting you were already going to sit in. There’s no reading list and nothing to log into. It’s seven and a half hours in the room between 15 October and 10 December.
What I ask for instead is four things, and I hold you to all four.
- You’re in all five sessions, live. The teaching is recorded. The part where people work their own situations isn’t, because that’s the only way anyone says what they mean.
- You do the move. One move between sessions, on a situation you already have, and you report back on what happened, including when it didn’t work.
- You take the diagnostic twice. Before the first session and after the last one. I use the anonymized results to show the next room what moved.
- You give a testimonial if it worked. Written, in your words, plus a LinkedIn recommendation at the end.
The 10 December guarantee
Keep all four, and on 10 December you either have one thing that’s visible outside your own team, or I keep working with you one to one until you do.
Who this is for
People in the middle of organizations of 200 or more
Project managers, product owners, scrum masters, team leads and line managers. The people who turn strategy into execution and carry the weight when it gets lost on the way down.
The size of the organization matters. In a startup you sit close enough to the leadership that the squeeze is small, and this will feel abstract. It works when decisions arrive without you and your results depend on people with their own manager and their own priorities.
It also needs you to bring something you haven’t solved and say it out loud in front of 11 other people. If you’d rather watch and take notes, a book will serve you better.
The material has been tested
This is the first room, and the material isn’t new
The pilot is new, so I have no testimonials from it yet. That’s what the fourth condition is for. The material itself has been in front of a lot of people already.
“What sets Florin apart is his ability to translate complex leadership challenges into simple, structured frameworks that are easy to apply. His chain reaction from clarity to influence, combined with concrete 1% shifts, made the content both practical and relevant.”
Barbara Klein
VP, Passion for Projects Congress
“Working with Florin, I quickly realized how effective his approach was. I learned how to recognize and adjust my communication to fit the styles and needs of others, which has helped me connect in a more meaningful way.”
Marian Nijhof
Project Leader, IKEA
Who is running this
Florin Lungu
I spent 12 years as a project manager inside Renault and Volvo. I know what it’s like to sit in the middle of a matrix organization where your results depend on people who don’t report to you, where priorities shift without warning and where the person making the decision has never done your job.
Since then I’ve worked with leaders and organizations across the Nordics, and I keep finding the same six gaps. I’m writing a book about them, out in 2027.
Maxwell Leadership Certified · Cialdini Institute Accredited · ex-Renault · ex-Volvo
Before you apply
What people ask
Is it really free?
Yes. There’s no invoice, no deposit and nothing to buy afterwards. The price is the four conditions, and I’ll ask you to say yes to each one on the call before you’re accepted.
What happens after I apply?
If it looks like a fit, I’ll write to you within two working days and we’ll find 25 minutes to talk. You tell me about the situation you’d bring in and what you’ve already tried, I read the four conditions to you, and I decide afterwards by email. If it isn’t a fit, you’ll hear that from me too, and you’ll hear why.
What happens if I miss a session?
The seat goes to the next person on the waitlist. That sounds harsh on a free programme, and it’s the opposite. Eleven other people are bringing their own situations into that room on the assumption that you’ll be there too.
How is this different from coaching?
In coaching you get me. Here you get me and a room of people sitting in the same seat as you, and half of what you take away comes from watching someone else work through the thing you thought only you had.
Will there be another one after this?
Yes, and it will cost 9,950 SEK plus VAT. The people in this room will have shaped it.
Apply
Twelve seats, five Thursdays, and applications close on Wednesday 30 September
15 and 29 October, 12 and 26 November, 10 December 2026. 15:00 to 16:30 Stockholm and Copenhagen time. Live on Zoom. 12 seats, one per company.
Florin