“Every system is perfectly designed to get the result that it does.”
― W. Edwards Deming
Organizations have been moving from hierarchies to networks, but their systems are still designed using models from the Industrial Revolution. Functions are still siloed. We continue to suffer the same bottlenecks. Nearly 80% of employees worldwide are still not engaged or are actively disengaged at work. [That stat has held steady for the better part of a decade, btw.] The power of the network, we believe, is that such people would be able to innovate where innovation is needed, not just where it can be imagined by a particular executive in the home branch. Hierarchies are still layering on this network leadership approach.
Enter “machine assistants” (OpenAI, CoPilot, etc.). Over the next three to five years, employees will learn enough prompts to delegate a significant percentage of their work to a machine assistant/co-worker. And who wouldn’t? If you are disengaged or overworked, why wouldn’t you utilize every tool available?
Workflow automation can reduce manual errors by up to 90% and decrease processing time by 50%. Some stats:
72% of organizations prioritize intelligent process automation in their efforts for digital transformation. HFS research
31% of businesses have fully automated at least one function. 41% of the respondents say that they are using automation extensively across multiple functions. —McKinsey
More stats here.
Ultimately, this is good news for everyone. But it makes people understandably uneasy when organizations don't have a good story to tell about what happens to those workers who will be displaced, only the cost savings that ML/AI will bring.
What if employees could enter their credentials and skills, share their problem-solving interests, and get dynamically assigned to a team based relevant to the organization’s needs? No more silos. The organization could also crowdsource expert citizen engineers with similar interests and skills for inside-outside problem-solving, where appropriate.
Such a dynamic system would radically rethink human resources, management, employee development, and AI-driven/purpose-driven problem-solving.