In order to create that future, we must believe it is possible. In this mini-report I have distilled the major arguments that a prosperous future of jobs is possible.

You can download the report from the image or read the full text below.

Please let me know any thoughts on how to refine or improve this, or counter-arguments I can respond to, so I can continue to make the arguments more solid. You can message me where I shared the report on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Creating a positive future of work

Many fear that AI disruption will lead to widespread job losses, the erosion of the quality of work, and increasing work inequity.

Despite these concerns there are a wide range of factors that point to the potential for a highly positive future of work. All of these factors will be amplified by being clear and deliberate in building a ‘Humans + AI’ future where AI is used to complement humans.

This mini-report presents a range of compelling arguments for why future job prosperity is possible, perhaps even likely.

Seeing the potential for a positive future is a necessary enabler to taking the action that will make it happen.

Key concepts

Automation vs. Augmentation: AI can be deployed with the intent of replacing human work, or of complementing it to enhancing human capabilities and increase their value.

Job Polarization: We have long observed an growing divide between high-skill, high-wage jobs and low-skill, low-wage jobs. AI use could aggravate that gap but could also close it.

Skill Premium: The pay premium for those with superior skills will be impacted by AI, by commoditizing an array of tasks and enhancing the marketable skills of workers who use AI well.

Adaptability and Learning: A faster pace of change requires even higher levels of adaptability and learning, with support needed for all or most to make required transitions.

1. The potential of Humans + AI

Rather than considering humans and AI as potential competitors in value-creation, we can and should focus entirely on a ‘Humans + AI’ framing, in which we seek to maximize the value of humans by being complemented by AI.

In almost all domains humans and AI collaborating will generate superior outcomes.

There is a rapidly growing movement of inspiring leaders, thinkers, and doers putting their energy into designing and implementing the structures that will generate the best outcomes from humans and AI working together.

2. AI enhances value-generating skills

AI can be used for “intelligence augmentation” and task support, substantially increasing the value created by human labor. Those who use AI to enhance their value contribution will be able to maintain or even grow their skill premia.

Many research studies across different industries have shown that AI usually gives a higher boost to work capabilities and outcomes to lower-skilled workers, narrowing the differential between the value of their work.

The unbounded scope of GenAI means this skill enhancement can be applied to any work from routine to complex, including even physical labor.

3. Creation of new jobs

As has happened as the economy has evolved through human history, new jobs are being created at an extraordinary pace. The faster the pace of change, the more new jobs are created.

Many rapidly growing roles, such as telehealth nurse, digital identity specialist, mobile money agent, augmented reality designer, and data-driven personal trainer, barely existed a few years ago.

Some of the many jobs being created include neural interface designer, AI auditor, cognitive enhancement coach, AI ethics officer, prompt engineer, and far more. We cannot readily predict what new jobs will emerge, but we can be sure they will plentiful.

4. Unique human capabilities at the fore

The increasing use of GenAI will lead people to define and refine their unique value contribution in both employment and freelance work.

In pre-GenAI work people’s skills were applied more diffusely and consistently to defined tasks and outputs. In collaborative work with AI, people will find different and more pointed ways to complement AI, focusing on their most distinctive human and individual capabilities.

The use of AI will draw out and refine people’s unique capabilities working collaboratively with AI, increasing the specificity of their value creation.

5. Specialization reduces substitutability

A key factor driving prices and wages is substitutability. If equivalent work outcomes can be achieved by substitutes, for examples by other people, outsourcing, or AI, the result will be downward pressure on wages.

As we shift to more distinctive and unique human capabilities, accelerated by AI education tools, it will be harder to substitute individual workers.

The most successful companies will be designing work to tap specialist skills, as commoditized work will create commoditized products and services with no competitive advantage.

6. Enhanced education and learning

One of the most powerful and valuable applications of AI is providing personalized education, assisting both those who already have access to quality education as well as the many around the world who do not.

This democratized availability of learning tools will assist people to improve their existing marketable skills, and swiftly develop new capabilities as these increase in value in a shifting job marketplace.

7. Comparative advantage

The economic theory of comparative advantage states that individuals, organizations, or nations should focus on tasks where they have the greatest efficiency differential over others.

Even if AI is better than humans at every task, it should be applied where its economic advantage is greatest. This will still leave ample jobs for humans where AI’s advantage is smaller.

Taken to an extreme, this is an argument around energy allocation. Humans are currently far more energy-efficient than AI. If this dynamic changes, regulation may be required to ensure humans have access to the resources they need to compete.

8. Attraction of talent

Companies can take two broad approaches to the role of AI in work: emphasizing substituting workers with AI, or complementing workers with AI.

The former will experience increasing difficulty in attracting talent.

The latter will attract the best talent.

In a world of AI, the ability to attract top talent, not least to implement the best AI systems, will be an even greater differentiator of performance than in the past. Companies will succeed based on their attitude to human labor relative to AI.

9. Work redesign

There are major risks in current prevailing work structures based on tightly defined job roles. These tend to favor automation over complementing skills.

By understanding the potential value of AI in enhancing value creation organizations can reconceive the future shape of the organization, the specific human roles that will support that, and how to deploy their talent the most effectively.

Those companies that engage pre-emptively in this task reorganization will be massively advantaged as value creation shifts to ‘Humans + AI’ models.

10. Humans’ extraordinary adaptability

Humans have proven to be exceptionally adaptable to a vast array of rapid changes in their environment, from the Ice Age to human-created transitions from gunpowder, steel, steam, and a multitude of other inventions. When we needed,we adapted extremely swiftly to Covid and adopted remote and flexible work.

In his 1970 book Future Shock, Alvin Toffler suggested that the pace of change would lead to a state of individual societal shock. In the decades since then and still today we have proven to be exceptionally resilient to accelerating change.

Humans are defined by our unlimited adaptability. We will continue to demonstrate that through shifts present and future.

11. Emotional intelligence and human connection

There are many roles where ‘humanity’ and emotional engagement is expected and strongly desired, including in personal services, health and aged care, and education. People want to be inspired by a human teacher or supported by a human carer than their AI counterparts.

Organizations can only be effective if their leaders and employees have strong social and emotional skills to engage, collaborate, ideate, and create an environment where people want to work.

Every business depends on their customer relationships. Trust and loyalty requires human connection and emotional engagement.

12. Preference for human work

Over and above humans’ unique human capabilities of emotional intelligence and connection, people will continue to want and prefer humans to do many kinds of work for them.

For many roles, even if machines equal or exceed human performance, we will still want and prefer humans. Customers will prefer to read books by human writiers, to work with a human financial advisor, and human waiters to robot waiters, however witty their repartee.

People are already demonstrating their willingness to pay a premium for human rather than automated services. In an increasingly automated world that premium will increase substantially.

13. Design for inclusive economic prosperity

Productivity increases have increasingly gone to corporations rather than workers over the last decades, with substantially higher wealth concentration. There are absolutely risks of increased concentration in economic power with the rise of AI.

One counterpoint is that the wealthiest corporations and individuals benefit from prosperity being more rather than less evenly distributed. A growing base of affluent consumers is required to fuel any business’s growth. Everyone loses in a world of massive social fragmentation.

Everyone will be aligned in designing for inclusive economic prosperity, however we achieve that.

Action for future job prosperity

The future of work is open for us to create. Nothing is inevitable

The first step is to acknowledge the challenges and also to explore and understand the forces and factors that could lead to future job prosperity.

Enormous positive possibilities are open to us. We can create a world in which people enjoy their work more, there are more opportunities for individuals, and human potential is uncovered and expressed more than ever.

How we act now, as corporate and government leaders, entrepreneurs, and individuals, will shape our future.

It was a highly stimulating, rich discussion. Below are slivers of the discussion organized around just two of the major themes of the conversation, focusing on my thoughts but also including insights from the other panelists (distorted through my memory and perception): 

Beyond productivity

Productivity should not be the goal; productivity is a flawed concept that only measures efficiency of tasks and output, not value created. Productivity metrics work well for machines and repetitive tasks but not for knowledge work where goals are less defined. Value often comes from not being busy, by wandering, doing things that seem to have no bearing on work, and coming across different ideas, having conversations. This is not usually achieved by sitting in front of computers at your desk. 

Productivity is based on metrics, so what should companies measure? The only truly useful measures are higher-order objectives such as customer satisfaction, customer happiness, employee personal growth, creativity, and so on. Any lower-level focus on tasks completed will be gamed and is close to meaningless in driving real value creation.

For knowledge workers productivity is only really meaningful over longer periods such as years or possibly months. This means that all exploration and learning along the way has time to flourish and bring unexpected benefits, people have the space they need to flourish, grow, reimagine, and find new pathways. Measuring productivity in short time frames necessarily quashes the ability to develop, grow, and create true value.

The organizations that will prosper in these increasingly wonderful, extraordinary, wild times are the ones that focused on the biggest possible picture of making people happier and better and more fulfilled. If they do, productive outcomes will flow richly.

Amplifying human potential

The starting point is believing in human potential. The question has to be: “who can we be?” Organizations need to move beyond the boxes of job roles and definitions to completely fluid work in which people can apply their talents – recognized and latent – in a multitude of ways. The organizations that enable people’s potential to emerge are the ones that will succeed in the years to come.

Growth has become for some a dirty word, but that’s only if you are focusing on growing revenue and profits to the exclusion of all else. We need to also frame it as the growth of humans and organizations to become who and what they can be. In a word, moving towards their positive potential.    

Growth is a mutual endeavor, an alliance between individuals and organizations. Companies need to shape work for employees to grow as a person in every possible dimension, emotionally, as well as in skills that they can sell in the talent marketplace. Employees should enable organizations to grow, to be more flexible and adaptable, maturing to engaging emotionally with the world and perceiving bigger, more important objectives for what the organization could be. 

Diversity is essential for creativity and learning, Organizations need to increase their “absorptive capacity” for different ideas and perspectives, and manage the “creative abrasion” that comes from this. Psychologically safe environments allow failure to lead to learning and growth, for both the individual and the organization. 

Photo: Amelia Loye

This challenge has been compounded with deep economic uncertainty. A recent survey of Australian SMB leaders by flexible work software provider GoTo revealed that 79% thought a recession was likely in the next 6 months, with 70% nervous about the state of their business if this eventuates.

Leveraging technology for hybrid work

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic proved that people and organisations can adapt to change, albeit sometimes forcibly. Yet simply shifting work meetings to video calls does not result in effective work. There is still an enormous opportunity to move to a new style of working that massively amplifies company performance and energises employees.

Especially in smaller organisations that can’t afford structured change programs, work patterns will tend to revert to whatever seems easiest. Setting up the right platforms is essential for work to happen in one place, wherever people are physically working. This enables everyone to be clear what they need to do and how they fit into the flow of work that drives the company’s success.

The more uncertain the business environment, the greater the importance of having a well-established flexible technology platform. Cloud software can readily be adapted to changing needs. Good platforms allow staffing levels to be readily scaled, with specialist skills brought in as required. As never before, SMBs can become highly adaptable, smoothly adjusting to business conditions. 

Challenges and opportunities for SMBs

Smaller businesses have both fundamental advantages and disadvantages compared to large corporations. In a recent article on employee and customer experience in a hybrid world I presented the critical factors for implementing remote and hybrid work. SMBs in particular need to focus on three issues:

Establishing policies. Smaller organisations don’t need anything like the same degree of governance as large corporations. However, there is a minimum amount of effort required to set work policies that meet legal requirements, establish good practices, and can be clearly communicated. Recognise that bar, do what’s required, and then simply evolve your policies as you need.

Maintaining morale. SMBs start with an advantage because all employees can clearly see how their work contributes to the success of the business and their colleagues. Smaller companies may not have the resources to fly in remote team members for offsite meetings, for example, but they can readily create a culture in which employees are encouraged to find fun ways to develop strong relationships with their peers, wherever they are located.

Providing support. Technology is the fundamental underpinning of remote and hybrid work, yet it doesn’t always work as it should. Large companies have the luxury of dedicated IT functions. Smaller companies need to be innovative in how they apply limited resources to enabling their teams to be happy and productive in their work.

The central role of technology in almost all productive work today means it is critical to make everyone in your company experience it as an enabler, not a barrier.

Making technology work for your team

Work is now wherever the worker is. Desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, and sometimes even more novel devices such as VR headsets enable people to create value for their employers from the office, homes, cafes, parks, or the beach of their choice, often using their own devices.

Unfortunately, our wondrous technologies sometimes fail, creating frustration, lost productivity, and sometimes significantly impacting the business. To keep an organisation running and productive, employees need good technology support wherever they are. This is critical not just so they can get on with their work, but to make them feel supported and valued.

Natasha Rock, who leads GoTo’s IT support solutions in Asia-Pacific, observes that support staff in smaller businesses absolutely need to maximise their limited time resolving issues. To do this they need to proactively automate whatever they can, and implement a central platform to manage support activities. This is especially critical in an uncertain business environment, given heightened attention to productivity and expenses.

Great technology support drives productivity and morale. This is apparent in GoTo’s recent survey, with 46% of survey respondents citing maintaining high employee morale as essential for recession-proofing their businesses. There are three elements for SMBs to achieve that efficiently and effectively: 

Embrace cloud. Large companies with legacy technology systems are rapidly shifting to the cloud, but that is a process that can take years or literally decades. Smaller organisations are adopting software-as-a-service with alacrity, enabling their team members to work seamlessly from anywhere. It not only allows the most recent software to be used, but also makes it far easier to keep the company’s systems fully functional. 

Implement a platform for support. A central support platform brings together everything required in one place. Whatever the problem, however the request is sent, the most relevant responses or resources can be immediately applied. Everything from data gathering to user guides to remote access is available to team members without having to switch between tools. If needed, issues need to be easily escalated to external support professionals or hardware manufacturers. An integrated platform makes remote IT support faster to deploy and more efficient to resolve issues for the benefit of everyone – business, employees and the customers they support.

Adopt automation. Task automation has been at the heart of the recent evolution of enterprise technology. Now with tools such as GoTo Resolve, automation is readily available to smaller businesses. A host of technology functions such as deploying devices, upgrading software remotely, or scaling software licenses can be done at scale. GoTo’s Rock points to the capability for “self-healing” of employee devices, for example automatically checking CPU usage, restarting machines, deleting temporary files, or installing cleaner files. This saves substantial time for both support personnel and users.

Remote and hybrid work are not just a reality, they are a massive enabler for those businesses able to adapt. Smaller companies that establish the right platforms and systems can readily make that shift and seize the opportunities of a swiftly changing world.

Flexibility and experience at the centre

One of the lessons underlined by the pandemic is that human society is highly resilient. It is true that the adjustment and flexibility required was forced on individuals and companies, but most found themselves able to adapt far faster than they would have imagined possible.

This has created a world in which two elements become critical:

Flexibility. Employee expectations have irrevocably shifted. To attract the most talented workers employers now understand they must offer choices in how they fulfil their roles. Customers too expect more flexibility than ever before in how they communicate, whether it be in-person, on the web, on social media, on a phone call, or through new channels.

Quality of experience. Flexibility is a vital foundation for quality of experience, but far more is required. Ultimately, it is about how pleasurable it is to engage. Is it something people want to do? One of the broadest trends in society is of increasing expectations and discernment. The bar for customer experience is always rising. As customers experience excellence once, they expect that in all other interactions. The much-vaunted ‘Great Resignation’ is substantially due to employees finding that their experience of working conditions was not something they chose to endure any longer.

Employees and customers have more choices than they have ever had. The only businesses that will flourish in the years ahead are those that offer flexibility and the highest quality experience to both employees and customers.

Building great employee experience in a hybrid world

For many, remote or hybrid work is highly attractive, offering flexibility, better work-life balance, and saving commuting time. For companies, it can vastly expand their talent pool. However the biggest downside for both employers and employees is reduced engagement, not feeling as connected to the company or colleagues. This is central to the quality of employee experience.

There are three foundations for strong employee engagement in a hybrid world, which I was heartened to see validated in my recent conversation with Lindsay Brown, VP & General Manager APJ for flexible work software provider GoTo (which those of you who have been around for a while will remember as LogMeIn):

Clear and effective policies. After the onset of the pandemic, GoTo chose to shut down its Sydney offices, resulting in many team members moving out of the city centre or to different parts of the country. The first step to enable this was establishing clear HR policies that addressed the legal issues of working from home such as health and safety, as well as ensuring that the person’s responsibilities could be fulfilled sustainably over the long-term. Managers and staff set mutual expectations on the role and what would be required for high performance.

Regular in-person meetings. There is no substitute for the connection and trust-building enabled by in-person meetings. The largest fully remote companies in the world, such as Automattic and GitLab, all hold regular all-hands meetings. GoTo, now without offices in Australia, simply began using rental spaces for team meetings when needed, and established consistent all-hands events, for which employees fly in if necessary.

Structured opportunities for engagement and feedback. When everyday interactions in the office aren’t happening, engagement needs to be purposefully designed. At GoTo, every fortnight teams organise social activities, which can include team lunches, town hall meetings, trivia nights, bowling, and work for favourite charities. To address the real danger of people not feeling heard, quarterly pulse surveys monitor how people are feeling about their relationship with their manager, their career prospects, and other vital issues. 

Giving customers flexibility

The challenge with customers is similar. How do you maintain positive emotional engagement when both customers and support staff could be anywhere?

Two design factors enable this:

Choice of communication channels. Every customer has different preferences in how they engage with companies, which will change depending on their circumstances. Meeting the customer where they are is a powerful foundation for enduring relationships. For example, Sydney FC, Australia’s most successful soccer club, was massively impacted by the onset of Covid. At the time the only way fans could get in touch with Sydney FC was over the phone. GoTo helped them swiftly implement a multi-platform system allowing contact over email, voice, web, social media, messaging apps and other channels.

Seamless integration for service. It is one thing to provide customers with choices in how they get in touch. For this to work customer service people need to be able to access and manage the communications in one place. Sydney FC’s system allowed service agents to deal with inbound enquiries from any source from wherever they are working.

Prioritising between customer and employee experience

Leading any business requires clear prioritisation, but this is particularly the case for smaller organisations. The substantial repositioning required by the shift to a hybrid world requires pointed choices. Brown’s advice on this is particularly insightful and useful.

“Don’t try and do too much at once.” “What’s most important: the customer experience, or the employee experience?”

It’s a very useful question to consider. This simple frame forces leaders to weigh what is going to make the most difference to success.

For some companies it is critical to retain and attract the right staff in what is a very challenging employment market. For others the higher priority is to improve customer engagement. In the long run both are critical, but choosing an immediate priority will focus attention and resources, and very likely lead to better outcomes.     

Better experience in a hybrid world

The world has changed, and businesses that don’t change with it will find themselves falling behind. Both employees and customers want flexibility and better experiences. The businesses that understand this, select their priorities, and implement the right systems will flourish in a post-Covid world.

First published on LinkedIn.

One of the most fundamental changes in shifting from office-based to distributed teams is the need to move from synchronous to asynchronous work.

Synchronous (at the same time) is the common mode for much office work, where people get together for meetings and collaboration. Asynchronous (at different times) is the default way of operating for any well-established distributed organization.

The poster child for this is Automattic, which makes WordPress. Founder Matt Mullenweg has run the company as a completely distributed company since it was founded in 2005.

Mullenweg has shared his Distributed Work’s Five Levels of Autonomy framework to describe how organizations tend to progress from traditional work to structures more suited to distributed work. He says:

“Level four is where you go from synchronous to asynchronous, and this one’s kind of magical. By the way, it’s also really, really hard. It’s much easier to work together if you’re there at the same time and you can kind of ping pong back and forth. But if you’re able to design an organization that people popping in and out at whatever timezone or whatever times are able to fully contribute and move forward the goals in a meaningful way, then you unlock access to the world’s talent. You unlock ultimately flexibility in everyone’s day. You give people a ton of autonomy, and I believe asynchronous interactions can be far richer than synchronous ones.”

For the record, level five is ‘Nirvana’, which Mullenweg describes as “unattainable but what you always want to aspire to”.

The crux of this is that aynchronous work depends on capturing your work and thoughts for people to build on at another time. This can be in audio or video, but is usually and most efficiently shared in writing.

Good writing is highly valued at Automattic, as it is at the heart of effective work. Mullenweg says:

“Automattic is a written communication culture and I believe clear writing represents clear thinking, and we filter for this in our hiring, and we talk about writing a lot.”

Others are now realizing the critical role of clear, succinct writing in distributed work.

The Economist notes that “for the structured thought it demands, and the ease with which it can be shared and edited, the written word is made for remote work”, expanding:

“The move to remote working has enhanced the value of writing to the entire organisation, not just the corner office. When tasks are being handed off to colleagues in other locations, or people are working on a project “asynchronously”, meaning at a time of their choosing, comprehensive documentation is crucial. When new employees start work on something, they want the back story.”

As individuals, we need to work to improve our writing, making it unambiguous, to the point, and useful to others. As Mullenweg points out, this means editing your writing.

Organizations need to expect and explicitly laud good writing. Poor communicators – in a distributed work environment increasingly meaning poor writers – will impede progress.

The invention of writing was effectively the birth of civilization, allowing us to capture and communicate our ideas.

The power of writing remains still vital today, providing a critical foundation for the next phase of high-performance organizations.

In a country that has a Minister of Happiness, the government emphasised the social as well as economic benefits.

“The extended weekend comes as part of the UAE government’s efforts to boost work-life balance and enhance social wellbeing, while increasing performance to advance the UAE’s economic competitiveness.”

Many other countries have been experimenting with four day workweeks.

Trials of a four day work week in Iceland have proven to be an “overwhelming success”.

The Japanese government this year recommended that companies allow their employees to work four days a week.

The Spanish government has launched pilots of a four day work week for interested private employers.

And the youthful Finnish Prime Minister, Sanna Marin, has proposed shifting the entire economy to four six-hour days each week.

It was 1936 when Ford Motor Company made the step to a five-day work week, eventually taking the rest of the world with it.

Which nation will take the lead in shifting us to a four day work week?

Many workers and executives have learned to appreciate the many positives of remote work, yet for many reasons very few companies will dispense with offices, since they can play a valuable role in highly productive organizations.

Last month I distilled thoughts on factors for success in the new era of hybrid work, but we need to delve deeper into the issues for effective organizational design.

Recently working with one of my clients on designing effective hybrid work structures, I defined five high-value roles that offices can play for companies and their staff.

Understanding these is a necessary foundation for selecting where different kinds of work should happen. However recognizing these roles also allows us to identify other ways to fulfil these vital organizational functions.

Human connection

Humans are deeply social animals. We need to interact regularly with people. Being in an office can provide company, connection, and conversation, and paves the way to spending time with others at lunch or over work. For many people it is their primary place for social interaction. Yet there are of course other places we can find human connection, for example in friendly coworking spaces, or encouraging work teams to organize face-to-face catchups that don’t necessarily need to be in an office or work environment.

Getting out of the house

Some people have a pleasant home environment including a comfortable work setup that surpasses their office arrangement. They are very happy to work from home, avoid commuting, and exercise more easily, finding they are significantly more productive. Others live in cramped or poorly lit apartments where they have to work at their kitchen table, or find that excessive time spent with their spouse or children leads to conflict. Many of these are keen to get back to the office, though again coworking spaces or other approaches can meet the same need.

Informal interactions

An unfortunate number of people have been for the last 18 months spending much of their working hours on video calls. They have plenty of interaction with other people, but all in structured online sessions that have a defined intent. Time might be allocated for personal sharing or chit-chat, however that is just a slot on the agenda. When you are working with others in an office, there are plenty of opportunities for informal interaction with no specific intent, just chatting. These times are where organizational culture is largely formed and expressed. Staff learn more about the context of what’s happening in the company, beyond what anyone has identified as something they need to know. This provides a broader understanding, and thus is often where valuable ideas are generated. Informal conversations can happen over video calls, but they require intent and recognition of their importance.

Serendipitous networks

I have worked extensively in exploring the role of organizational networks in high-performance organizations, a well-recognized success factor. Simply put, a better-networked firm will outperform its peers, with over recent years this factor becoming even more important. Since diverse networks create more value, these need to be formed not just by company structure and team design, but by fortuitous connections that drive innovation and unpredictable value creation. The office designs of Pixar and Apple’s ‘spaceship’, for example, were specifically shaped to enable these kinds of connections. Given the shift to remote work, a whole new sector of enterprise software designed to support serendipitous interactions has arisen, with some companies finding them highly useful. Arguably well-designed online systems have the potential to do better than the pure accidents of colocation.

Trust building

A primary role of offices which means they will never disappear is the critical role of trust building. Arguably the main reason organizations will still exist indefinitely as they compete with distributed ventures in the economy of individuals is the degree of trust you build from extended working and socializing with colleagues. Trust massively reduces the ‘transaction costs’ of effective collaboration, making group projects and innovation far easier. This is perhaps the primary reason why virtually every large completely virtual company organizes regular in-person meetings, with for example Automattic, which has well over 1,000 distributed staff members, running quarterly meetings convening all hands.

Many suggest that innovation-oriented collaboration is best suited to an office environment. While I don’t necessarily disagree, the significant success of many virtual organizations confirm remote collaboration can result in high levels of innovation, and I believe the five factors above are the underlying issues that enable creative ideation.

Being clear on the specific value of offices – or more specifically colocated work – enables the design of optimal hybrid work, encompassing not just home and office but also third spaces. Let’s go beyond the obvious to find new ways to configure our work for wellbeing and wonderful outcomes.

The deal gives Lessin 5% of Mogilko’s creator earnings for the next 30 years, but only if her earnings reach a certain threshold.

I first wrote about this idea in 2010 in a piece Will there be capital markets for people?, in which I looked at what had already happened in the space, and then again in 2012 writing about the startup Upstart, which tried to establish the same model. (Upstart subsdquently reverted to a more traditional personal lending model based on AI predictions, went to IPO last year and is now valued over 10x hgher at more than $20 billion).

The initiatives of Upstart and Slow Venture have evoked strong responses on the moral issues, in both cases being likened to “indentured servitude”.

Lessin has written a piece to explain his stance, The future of investing directly in people (subscription). He makes the case that personal debt is often not the best path for individuals, and is often not available to them anyway. Lessin says:

There are so many reasons for investors to like new forms of equity investing in people.

In a very uncertain world, it is far better to bet on people and their continued ingenuity and resilience than it is to bet on a single company.

Further, one can make a strong argument that the path to the greatest returns will lie in putting people in a position that frees them to pursue their best options over their lifetime rather than remain stuck in suboptimal positions to service fixed debt and traditional commitments.

And let’s be honest: With the world awash in money and with very low interest rates, financiers are very open to exploring new investment opportunities—perhaps more so than ever before in human history.

While many challenges remain with this model, I think it absolutely has a place in what is unequivocally a capitalist society.

This has to be a positive choice, as in people wanting to amplifying their earning potential and enjoyment of the present, starting from a place of choice.

This model should absolutely not be an entertained for people who are in a poor financial position and desperately need money.

How the boundaries between these situations are navigated needs to be explored. But Mogilko is happy with the deal, allowing her to invest in what she sees as the potential of her business, and I don’t think she should not be permitted to enter into it.

This is of course a test case, with Lessin hoping to apply the model to the career of thousands of promising individuals, creating a new asset class.

What do you think? Should investing in individuals be part of a capitalist society?

Image: Mauro mora

This is leading to a gradual—or sometimes rapid—resumption of office-based work. A minority of organizations appear to be intent on reverting to work structures very similar to those before the pandemic, with standard office hours, five days a week the norm. That is an enormous missed opportunity. This is a time to move forward rather than look back. 

The opportunity to forge a better future of work

One of the massive silver linings of the immense disruption we’ve experienced is that it allows us to question the assumptions that underpinned how things used to be. Rather than simply assuming that previous practices were ideal, we can pull back to consider what is the best way to configure work for our unique organization. That endeavor is vastly helped by the ‘grand experiment’ of work during the pandemic, in which every organization went through a sudden shift to extensive remote work, being forced to learn how to make it work at least reasonably well.

In short, both workers and organizations experienced that there were benefits from distributed work, often more than they expected. At the same time there is clearly still great value from being in the same place as your colleagues at times, to build trust, collaborate closely, and perhaps most importantly, appreciate the pleasure of human connection which has been sorely lacking for so long. 

This means we have now entered a new era of hybrid work. Virtually every organization is seeking to understand and implement the optimal combination of office and remote work to support their employees and achieve their mission. The opportunity is to use the time that people are in the office to fullest possible advantage, building trust, rapport, and social connection, integrated with the best use of time at home or coworking spaces for focused project work. Hybrid work at its best can far outperform either fully office-based or fully remote work. We just need to design it well. 

Tracking the progress of hybrid work

It is timely to examine in detail how organizations are shifting from their pandemic work arrangements to establish the best possible hybrid work structures. Fortunately Cisco has just released its Hybrid Work Index, which provides a detailed global view of the evolution of hybrid work. It will be updated quarterly, allowing leaders to understand what other companies are doing and lessons learned along the way. The full insights in the Hybrid Work Index are well worth spending the time to explore. I will highlight a few of the specific insights to help explore how we can best implement hybrid work. 

Perhaps the most important lesson from the pandemic is that now employees have experienced working from home, many are unequivocally expressing their preference do so a significant proportion of the time. As many as 80% want to work from the office two days or less each week, as shown in the data below. Staff have experienced the many benefits of remote work, including greater work flexibility as well as eliminating the time and annoyance of commuting.

Source: Cisco Hybrid Work Index

Employee engagement

One of the greatest challenges of remote work is that workers often experience being less engaged. They frequently have little informal connection with their managers and colleagues, with most interaction during goal-oriented team meetings. It is far harder to build a powerful company culture when people are not physically in the same place. 

This means one of the primary functions of visiting offices is to build engagement with colleagues and the company. Yet there is much that leaders can do to maximize engagement even when people work largely remotely. It requires new work practices and leadership styles. At Cisco team members are actively encouraged to check in with requests for attention, given the proven link to engagement and performance.  At all times leaders need to be sensitive not just to requests, but also to the unexpressed needs of their staff. Given limited face-to-face interaction, the value of this attention can be disproportionate in driving positive engagement.

Source: Cisco Hybrid Work Index

What has also been clearly demonstrated is that engagement is being increasingly driven by employees’ feeling of alignment with their employers’ purpose and impact. As the United Nations COP26 conference in Glasgow gets underway (incidentally supported by Cisco to enable an inclusive experience), sentiment about action on climate change is at a global all-time high. 

We will of course continue to travel for work, both locally to offices and nationally and beyond for meetings. Yet much travel and its associated carbon emissions are unnecessary. Those organizations that strive to optimize hybrid work will inevitably be improving their impact and attracting the support of their staff.

Next-generation online meetings

For many over the last 18 months, overexposure to video on flat screens has been challenging. We can now anticipate a next generation of online meetings that far transcend the experience of traditional video calls. Among the raft of innovations announced at the WebexOne conference this week was Webex Hologram, an exciting technology using augmented reality to make others appear as if they are in the same room as you. 

This announcement paves the way to far more immersive and engaging ways for us to communicate remotely. In coming years rapidly advancing meeting technologies will make the experiences of in-person and virtual meetings feel increasingly similar. Check out the video of Webex Hologram below for a sense of what is already here.

Inclusive work practices

One of the most critical issues for any organization is inclusiveness, not just in the culture and diversity of employees, but also in everyday work practices. We all understand that diversity in people’s characteristics and cognitive styles is essential. We also need to ensure that a wide range of distinctive views are actively incorporated into discussions and decisions. 

The reality is that participation in physical meetings is often skewed to a minority of those present, with some voices simply not heard. Unfortunately the dynamics of online meetings, especially when some are present in the office with others remote, can significantly accentuate this pernicious dynamic. Cisco’s extensive data from over 600 million meeting participants shows that almost half of those present are not speaking in any given meeting.

Source: Cisco Hybrid Work Index

This is major problem, meaning not just that voices are excluded, but also that some people inevitably feel less engaged. While sometimes time constraints and meeting size mean not everyone can participate, there are important measures to take to ensure the fullest possible engagement. 

On the technology front, meeting analytics can draw managers’ attention to imbalanced participation, and tools such as polls, Q&A, and whiteboarding can enable broader engagement. Real-time transcription and translation can substantially assist non-native speakers to follow what is happening, feel engaged, and speak up. Meeting transcription can allow people who do not need to be present in meetings to be productive in other ways and catch up later on what happened. 

This goes to some of the broader shifts in work practices that a world of hybrid work entails. Managers need to think differently about the role of meetings to ensure that people are not overloaded by back-to-back meetings which many find to be minimally productive. The best completely virtual organizations in the world shift work as much as possible from synchronous (i.e. meetings) to asynchronous styles, in which most work can be done in collaborative documents and workflow. 

Productivity and wellbeing

At the outset of the shift to remote work the concern of many managers was that workers would not be productive when working unsupervised at home amid distractions. Extensive data has shown that the opposite is often true, including one Stanford professor’s study showing a 13% increase in performance for those working from home. 

Depending on their home working situation, staff can find that in fact they are better able to block out undistracted time for tasks that require focus, especially if their office environment is open plan. However everyone is different in their work preferences. The unparalleled opportunity from hybrid work is that people increasingly have choices in where they work, which they can select depending on what they are working on. 

Days at home can be largely dedicated to focus work. Mondays and Fridays are commonly used for working from home, with some companies banning meetings on at least one of those days so people’s attention is not continually being broken.

Many have experienced a negative impact on their mental and physical wellbeing during full-time remote work. This must be taken into account in work design, with teams establishing structures that function best for their responsibilities and working styles. Pepsico’s ‘Work That Works’ program allows teams to choose how they do their work to suit them, with no default daily workplace. In some cases working from an office is what people need to enjoy human company and get welcome variety and stimulation in their lives, as well as to build productive relationships with colleagues.

Creating the future of hybrid work

This is a time of possibility, of being able to innovate in creating the work structures that work best for people, organizations, and the planet. We are on an extended journey to optimize this new phase of hybrid work, but we can be sure that it will be better than anything we’ve ever experienced before. It’s time to bring together the best of all possible work worlds to seize the potential of this new era of hybrid work. 

I greatly enjoyed our far-ranging conversation, which delved deep into the future of work and as far as the future of society. You can listen to the whole episode below.


One of our topics of conversation was the “economy of individuals”, a phrase I started using a decade ago. Here is what I said in response to Steve’s question about the idea in the podcast:

The economy of individuals doesn’t mean that organizations don’t exist, but it means in the first instance that in a fairly obvious way more and more people are either freelancers or independent agents, as Dan Pink described in his book Free Agent Nation. More of us are working as individual contractors, sometimes with a single client, more with multiple clients. This is what LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman describes as the alliance between the employer and the employee.

Hoffman says there’s mutual value in being able to develop the individual so they can create as much value as possible for the organization as well as themselves. This alliance means that individuals within an organization are becoming free agents, more and more flexible, able to do things outside that organizations’ constraints, which increasingly give staff the flexibility to do side gigs.

Inside organizations I believe we’re moving away from the rigidity of: ‘this is a job, this is a role, this is very tightly defined, let’s find the right person to put in this box’, towards organizations enabling a more fluid structure, bringing together what individuals are able to contribute to create the greatest value for the organization.

So organizations will still exist, but we now have more that are using a combination of full-time staff, full-time contractors, outsourced staff, and crowd workers. Major platforms such as Upwork now have major corporate divisions that can provide thousands or hundreds of thousands of individuals that can work on specific tasks, you may have some of those people on staff but if they are currently busy you can access more fluid labor.

This again goes back to the individual as the creator of value. Of course it’s labor plus capital, with the capital embedded in technologies, artificial intelligence, workflows, processes. These are what makes the organization work. However the individual is I believe increasingly at the heart, the essence of value creation.

The phrase ‘economy of individuals’ is of course a single frame and this is a rich topic. I will return to the massively important topic of the evolving relationship of individuals and organizations in other posts before long.

Image: Dimitar Belchev