The State of Work Management: From combustible and gas stations; to electric, with solar panels on my roof.
By Eric Rotkow, Managing Partner, The Wolf Tank
The future of work management lies in the balance between proven operating models and emerging AI capabilities. While AI is bound to reshape roles, it won't replace the need for thoughtful planning, collaboration, and process definition that is, and always will be, key.
Success over time requires aligning a marketing organization’s technology investments with an optimally structured operating model built to evolve with workforce needs.
By prioritizing human insight, refining the planning cycle, and putting adaptable frameworks in place, businesses like yours unlock maximum efficiency, agility, and impact that the new AI-driven era makes possible.
It is true that AI will change everything, but this does not mean the natural laws of the universe do not hold. We still require operating models that orchestrate capabilities and resources to plan and activate work to get the most from transformative technology. AI will not do all of our jobs. All our jobs will need AI.
In this business long enough to know about metaphorical combustible engines, we believe the imperatives of a modern operating model aim for straight-through agility with pristine cause-and-effect, as well as predictive decision-making and action.
In practical terms, how we think about people, process, and collaboration evolves, now as ever.
How We Think About … The New Unlocks
While great progress has been made over the last several years into the planning and distribution of content, stifling gaps persist. We believe the industry is a bit stuck:
Blind spots remain, including those related to workflow, talent, and a view toward the future. “Human breakthrough” is the real unlock.
Catastrophic overemphasis on execution and activation processes, rather than honing planning cycles.
Overspending on work management solutions prevails without requisite processes and operating models in place to realize and ROI.
How We Think About … Work Management Technology
Today, whether aligned with Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, or smaller vendors, brands are left to decipher sales motivated “best practices” or services-intensive redeployments and integrations that may, or may not, be the right thing to do.
Founded in an AI capability, new service delivery models will emerge requiring management and tech consultants to transform how they serve clients to enhance ways-of-working and technology capabilities with the application of AI. The technology that is available now, will not be work management tools of next year.
We advocate deploying technology in the enablement of a sustainable operating model to incrementally achieve efficiencies as new technologies become available. Tech investments should be measured, as the tech will change in the immediate future.
How We Think About … Modern Operating Models
In support of the enterprise’s operating model, casting marketing’s operating model in Work Management building blocks (domains), allows for a rational, studied approach to align resources and capabilities.
Operating Model Design Principles
Match the ways of working to the nature of the work
Approach technology as core and non-core
Determine best tech to fit individual work teams, not one for all
Embed common Planning and Spend management across sub-functions
View a winning CX as an outcome of a high performing cross-functional supply chain
Marketing’s optimal model supports the interaction of peer functions to deliver the Platform and Product operating models, which in turn, manifest the Customer Experience (See Figure 1). At the root, how humans work together is an outcome of the nature of the work and the best-fit tools available to them. In a new AI-evolved nuance, McKinsey distills these ways of working into Waterfall, Agile, and Artisan (See Figure 2).
Figure 1
Figure 2 – Teams may evolve with two human-AI interaction patterns (McKinsey)
By prioritizing human insight, refining the planning cycle, and putting adaptable frameworks in place, businesses like yours unlock maximum efficiency, agility, and impact that the new AI-driven era makes possible.